Transcript
0:00 Today we're going to talk about what everybody gets wrong about interval training and aerobic adaptation. That's right. Everyone misunderstands this. And what it is is it's aerobic interval training. Now, often people think of, oh, I'm going to go do some intervals and that's speed work and that means I'm developing my speed or my anorobic capacity or whatever buzzword lingo you want to use. But the truth is what the interval develops depends on how the components are modulated. Meaning the speed, the rep length, the rep distance, the rep number, the recovery time in between both reps and sets. We can play with all those variables to develop an interval session that basically gives us any sort of adaptation from pure speed development all the way towards lactate threshold or high-end aerobic development or even a recovery session. And you would know this if you studied the history of training. Not so much the science and the research.
1:09 Although in the early 2000s we started to see some coming from Verinique Balot and others who caught on to this idea pulling from people like Zadipek in Igloy where they understood okay intervals can be done aerobically. So what I'm going to teach you today is what that is how to do aerobic intervals and not just see them as speed training and when we should do this and when we should utilize this tactic. So, to start with, I'm going to give you a brief history lesson. In past videos, I've gone deep into the history of endurance training, but here we go. Okay. Back in the 30s and 40s, what happened is we took on what I'd call the heavy interval training phase where everyone basically did interval training all day, every day. We had Zatipek doing, you know, 40, 50, 60 by 400 or similar numbers of 200s, just endless number of repeats. A little bit before that, we had Gerseler and Rindell giving us 200s with recovery down to 120 heart rate or thereabouts and just going on and on and on and on.
2:20 And then in the 50s and 60s we had the rise of the Hungarians led by coach Mahali Iglloy who used almost exclusively intervals but unlike Zatapac who just did 400s and 200s all day. Iglloy did all sorts of short intervals from hundreds to 150s to 200s to 250s 300s all mixtures of them all together. And what we learned during this period before lineard came around and changed it is that we can develop aerobically through intervals. And that might be mind-blowing to some right now because traditionally when we think of aerobic development, we think of more linear desk. Go run a ton of miles at a easy to steady pace. Zone two, sometimes zone three for our workouts, whatever is in vogue nowadays.
3:12 We do that a lot and that's how we develop aerobically. And again, maybe we add in some threshold training to top that off and we're good aerobically. What I figured out is through constraints of living in a war torn Hungary and the influences from people like Gersler, Randelle, Zadipc, Vladimir Counz and others is that we can do this through intervals. So, what Iggy did is yes, he had occasionally a long run or easy day in there, but he figured out how to coach some of the world's best from world records in the mile to Olympic golds like Bob Schul for the US in the 5K. And he figured out how to get them very well aerobically trained by basically doing 400 meter repeats, often 200s, 150s, and hundreds.
4:06 And then we kind of lost this because littyard took over, popularized long training and people said, "Yeah, yeah, that interval stuff like forget it. We just use intervals for speed work." And the difference is this. When you use intervals for speed, meaning we'll call it some sort of tolerance to fatigue, some sort of we're bringing in just a little bit of anorobic work into it where we're tolerating and increasing that those lactate levels and they're going up and up and up and up and up.
4:39 When we do that kind of work, our rest intervals are generally longer. Okay, so this is the classic Roger Banister mile workout. 10 by 400 with two minutes rest. Sometimes nowadays down to a minute rest, but it's generally equal to one one or over, meaning more recovery. The faster we go, the more recovery we we need. Why? Because we're creating a lot of fatigue. And we need that space to be able to handle and get the volume of work that we need to get in, which still isn't that much, right? 10 x 400 2 and a half miles worth of work. It's decent, but not a ton. What I did instead is that he figured out, hey, if I run some hundreds or 150s or 200s with really short rest, and I run them kind of fast, but not that fast. What happens is my heart rate doesn't spike all the way up to max. He didn't know this at the time, but he speculated, now we know. my lactate levels don't increase quite as much as if I was doing the same pace for 800s or 600s or even 400s. You stay relatively aerobic. And one of the reasons this occurs is because you're manipulating the rep length so it is not too far as to create fatigue before giving yourself a little pause. And that little pause, that short break is key because if the break was longer, it would allow your anorobic system to recover.
6:20 Okay? And it wouldn't allow it would allow your aerobic system to come down and allow and force you to get it fired back up. But what happens is when we take a very short break, aerobic system comes down slightly, but then it's like back up to max right away essentially. meaning we're training well aerobically without letting that anorobic system recover and because of the short rep length we're not creating a lot of residual fatigue. So what does this look like when we look at intervals? It's doing things like would have his athletes do sets of 10 by 100 with turnaround rest. And when I mean turn around rest, I mean you run through the 100 meter finish line, you jaw, you like decelerate, and then you turn around and jog back to the start and go another 100 meters. So the rest is like 10 to 15 seconds. You do things like 150s with a 25 m or 50 m jog. So again, not very long, maybe 15 to 20 seconds. And you do reps of these at a faster than tempo pace. often. In England didn't use paces, but we can convert them a little bit thanks to Shu and others, Joe Douglas, who have have done some work in this era. And we can know that it's faster than threshold, obviously, but not crazy fast. So maybe sometimes around 5k effort for some of these where we're doing sets of 6 to 8 by 150 with short rest, 2550 meter jog at 5k effort.
7:52 And generally when we think of 5K effort, we might think, "Oh, this is like pretty tough. This is kind of speedworky, right? Specific training for the 5K. You got to be focused. You're running relatively fast. It's still mostly aerobic, but not something we'd say, hey, this is going to develop my threshold or whatever have you." Well, it's more of what we'd call V2 max work. What you do is when you split it into that short stuff with very short rest, it acts more like a kind of 10k, 15k, maybe even threshold type workout because you're manipulating the variables. All right. Now, I took it a step further because he said, "Hey, I want to get a high volume of this." So, he, as I mentioned there, he would do lots of intervals, but cut them into sets. And his belief here is the sets, the longer break allows us to dissipate more of that fatigue and then get back to, okay, I'm going to spend a decent amount of time in this kind of high-end aerobic state and put that slight pressure on things. So again with the 150s examples, you might do eight by 150 and then take a very slow 400 meter jog or walk and you're fully kind of fully recovered again. And then you go in with the short rest. So what it ends up simulating, think about it like this.
9:18 I haven't done the math on this so it's probably going to be off cuz not can't do running math in my head. But if you're going 8 by 150 and let's say those are running 25 seconds and you've got you know 15 seconds rest in between. You do the math on that and that's like five or six minutes probably somewhere in that range. Someone's going to correct me, I know, but it's a decent amount of time where it's almost like running mile repeats at a kind of fast but not too fast pace.
9:52 So, you develop aerobically. Okay, it's the the gist of it. Now, you might say, "Okay, Steve, but that's old school. Why would you do that?" Let's look at Yaka Bingerbertson's training. Famous for double threshold work, right? Double threshold. Everybody does this stuff. This is what everyone should do nowadays. Correct. Okay. What is often the second threshold workout of the day? 25 by 400 with short rest at again depending on the time of the year.
10:28 Not that fast paces. It's faster than his maybe 2k threshold repeats early in the morning, but it's maybe at again a little faster than threshold pace, half marathon pace, maybe 15k, maybe 10k pace, short rest. Again, it's longer than iglooy would do sometimes, but it's the same style of workout. It's just like swimmers do, right? Swimmers embody this. Why do they embody this? Because no one in their right mind wants to go do a 25minut threshold swim where you're just doing the same pace for 25 minutes staring out a line. It'll drive yourself nuts. So what do swimmers do? They break it into short reps. And swimming is even more interesting because you can go shorter recovery because it's harder to recover in a short amount of time when you're running. Things like fighting against gravity, you don't have to. And swimming and hydrostatic pressure and some other things related to the water make it physiologically easier to take like 10 seconds rest. Well, in running once you get really short, it's really hard to do. But the same idea applies. In fact, in the 1970s, there was a famous runner, Danny Henderson, I believe it was, who at the time ran some world class, I think, you know, 13, 20ish, 5K, training almost entirely like a swimmer, all short intervals, kind of iglooyesque, but even more so in terms of swimming. How do you race a 5K?
12:01 Predominantly aerobic event. You develop that through shorter intervals. Okay, so what does this mean? I got it, Steve. How can I apply this kind of short interval idea when I'm used to thinking of intervals as speed work? Well, I like to think of it in a couple different ways. Is one, it allows you to run a little bit faster, but be in the quote unquote zone or state where you're stimulating that high-end aerobic threshold training. This is what we see with with the Inger Britson athletes.
12:36 They're able to run a little faster on their 400s than if they were doing 2k repeats or 3k repeats or a steady threshold run. And their lactate levels are going to be in control at about the same level. So it allows you to run a little faster, which changes the stimulus, allows you to bring in a little bit more fast twitch fibers because the speed and and force requirement is higher and train aerobically. Okay, this also is a benefit for our fast twitch orientated athletes who generally have a little bit more speed and sometimes especially for the middle distance athletes get a little flat when we're doing way too much threshold work. This is why with 800 runners especially, I love doing aerobic development in this style where you're doing sets of 6 by 150 at 3k pace maybe even with 50 meter jog reps or between rest 400 between sets. It's a great way to develop aerobically for these 800 runners who again I can run a little bit more specific pace 3k 5k pace in that range that is faster than the threshold little bit more specific but still develop really well aerobically. Okay.
13:59 Second of all, I love this for a maintenance workout. Why? Because it's often less stress. This is why anger Britson's another reason why they do the 400 second time in the day is because it's not quite as daunting I think as saying okay I'm going to go crash a long threshold workout you break it down. The other part is it's easier to find and ride that line and correct if you go over the line.
14:30 Meaning, if you feel like you're starting to like, hund00s are too fast, these 300's a little too fast, 200's a little too fast, you adjust. And if you do them in sets, you've got a longer break in there to adjust and say, "No, I think I I pushed that over the edge. Let's get back into the right zone or right intensity level." So, I love the self-correcting mechanism. And then, as I said, I love doing these during the season as our aerobic kind of maintenance workouts, especially if we're looking at a high school or even a college season where you're racing every week and you're if you're racing every Saturday, let's say, generally what happens is Monday is a big workout, you know, we need a stimulus.
15:16 Let's go get this stimulus. Whether it's 5K pace, mile pace, whatever it is, we need this big workout. And then you come back Wednesday or Thursday and you're like, "Oh gosh, I gotta I got to race on Saturday. I still want to feel good." What do you do? You go do some 200s at 3k down to mile pace. And what do you get? you get a little rhythm work, but in the reality it functions more, especially if you go more towards 3k pace or even 5k pace, it functions more like a 10k, 15k critical velocity type workout where you're getting a lot of high-end aerobic maintenance or development versus traditionally when you are going to run 3k pace or even mile pace, 400s or whatever have you, you think, oh, this is a speed workout. This is a tolerate some fatigue. No, because if you shorten the reps, you're going to be in a better place. So, there you go. Aerobic intervals. Think of it like swimming.
16:17 Think of it as a couple guidelines here. Is the shorter the rep, I think, the easier it is to manage and not go too far into fatigue by messing up the pacing or what have you. the shorter the rest, the more aerobic it is. I know this sounds counterintuitive where you're like, "No, the short rest makes me fatigue more." Maybe if you're going route too fast. But generally what happens is we use our anorobic capacity at the start of the race or the start of the workout because our aerobic system isn't revved up enough. And if the aerobic system can cover all or most of the energetic demands, then we're less aerobic or sorry less anorobic as we go along because we're covering most of the demands aerobically. Right? If we're running 10k pace, we're covering 90 whatever percent of the demands and we only have a little bit of anorobic, you know, usage there. Okay. The short rest, what it does is it keeps that aerobic system primed and ready without allowing that anorobic system the time to recover. This is why if you really wanted to do some quote unquote anorobic stuff, what you would do is you would have really freaking long rest to allow creatine phosphate system to recover to allow anorobic glycolysis system to kind of recover. And this is why you do something like I don't know for 800 runner 4 by300 with six seven minutes rest in between at faster than 800 pace maybe 600 pace or close to 400 pace. You can also add this on. I love this as a maintenance workout. I've already mentioned maintenance, but like an add-on, meaning we do a mini speed session where we're doing some 400s at mile pace or 300s at mile or 800 pace or something like that. Then you take a little rest and you go, you know what?
18:18 We're going to do a couple sets of 10 by 100 with turnaround rest at 10k pace, 5k pace. And all of a sudden, you get some aerobic benefit in this workout to kind of just keep that system prime. All right, there you go. That's how you use intervals for aerobic development. Keep it in your toolkit. And this way, whenever someone says, "Oh, you're doing speed work." When you're doing intervals, you say, "No, no, no. Depends on how you modulate the recovery, the rep length, the speed, the set number, the pacing, all of those variables. This is why I hate when people say, "Oh, 4x4 minute workout.
18:58 This is the key." Or, you know, do this Tabata sprint workout. This is the key or whatever K is at this pace. No, no, you can create the same stimulus varying up the distance and playing with those variables. So, I can have instead of 4x4 minutes, I could literally do 200s and get this V2 max workout in if I modulated the recovery and the speed correctly. It's about how you use the variables. Think of the great swimming coaches. They do this really well. All right, till next time everybody. Don't forget, subscribe, share, and as always, if you want to support me, check out my book. It's doing great. 3 months it's been out and it averaged 4.8 stars out of five on Amazon. Crazy.
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