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1. The Limits of HIT Training:
The hype of HIT has been around for a few years. Now we can also see the limitations. Here are 9 rules for runners to use High Intensity Training productively.
In recent years, we’ve been inundated with articles, promotions, and studies in praise of high intensity training (HIT), sometimes called HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). The stories came from many varied sources, including CrossFit, something called Tabata training, and the McMaster University laboratory of exercise scientist Martin Gibala.
The message was always highly alluring, almost magical: “You can get fitter by doing less.” These HIT efforts often required just 6 to 8 all-out sprints of 20 to 30 seconds each several times a week to achieve their results. It seemed like the weight-loss equivalent of “Eat more, weigh less.”
Now, it seems the tide is turning. It’s about time. At this point, we ought to be able to evaluate HIT more broadly. I’m actually a fan, but I also believe in perspective and balance. That’s what we need to understand HIT, and use it effectively.
More...from Podium Runner.
2. Is it always advantageous to be resilient?:
Lloyd Emeka is back with another sports psychology insight, this time into the role of resilience and how being vulnerable can be a positive experience.
“I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall”.
The above quote from Serena Williams is an example of the importance that is associated with having the ability to overcome adversity within a sporting context.
In our everyday lives, human beings experience a multitude of obstacles and challenges which varies from daily hassles to life-changing events, which has arguably been exacerbated by Covid-19. A combination of these factors has led to an ongoing narrative of resilience as an ideal human trait and skill to cope with difficult life challenges.
More...from https://tinyurl.com/4bxhp6y9" target="_news">(Fast Running.
3. Training alone or training with others - which is best?
Most endurance events are solitary pursuits as you're ultimately competing alone on race day. Training for these events is a very different matter though as many people choose to get together in pairs or groups for at least part of their weekly workouts.
For anyone performance-minded this leads to the natural question of which is really the best method for driving improvement; training alone or training with others?
Group training
Having gained quite a bit of experience of training alone and with other athletes over the years, I believe there's no single correct answer to the question. Both training alone and training in groups can be extremely effective, but what's important to understand is when and why you might be better off getting some company and when it’s more appropriate to go it alone.
There's a time and a place for both approaches and armed with the right information you can aim to get the best of both worlds, rather than the worst of both (as I definitely have done from time to time in the past).
More...from Precision Hydration.
4. Let’s Go The Mountains: La Sportiva Cyklon Review:
What You Need To Know
Weighs 11.9 oz. (337 g) for US M10/EUR 44
Features single-dial BOA® Fit System with Dynamic Cage
Integrated gaiter keeps out pretty much all debris
Exceptional Frixion XF 2.0 Mudguard outsole
Available now (kind of) for $160
TAYLOR: Sweet, sweet summertime is a glorious thing in the mountains out here in Colorado. Short-lived but well-lived; in the blink of an eye, it quickly comes to a close. We’ve already had our first snow above treeline and the aspens are growing gold as we speak.
Thankfully, the right gear is all you need to tromp around on trails year-round. La Sportiva dropped the Cyklon off just in time to have one heckuva going away party for summer.
Built with the mountains in mind, the Cyklon is accompanied by a one-dial BOA Fit System to set runners up for success on a variety of terrain. This shoe is chock-full of details that would excite any technical terrain trotters.
MATT: Arriving for review just in advance of some nasty summer storms here in the Mid-Atlantic, The Cyklon was primed for some muddy and debris-riddled trails. While primarily marketed as a mountain running shoe, the Cyklon’s features also make the shoe a great tool for navigating technical terrain, as well as wet and slippery conditions.
More...from Beleive in the Run.
5. 3 Workouts That Teach Pain Tolerance:
Increasing your muscle pain tolerance can put you ahead of the competition, both mentally and physically. Here are three “sufferfest” workouts to try now.
Endurance racing is painful. Whether it’s the slow burn of an Ironman triathlon or the acid bath of a 5K road race, each type of endurance event inflicts intense suffering in some form. Athletes who are better able to tolerate the discomfort that comes with competing have an advantage over those with a lesser tolerance. Former 5000-meter American record holder Bob Kennedy said it well: “One thing about racing is that it hurts. You better accept that from the beginning or you’re not going anywhere.”
The good news is that athletes can increase their tolerance of race pain through training. Research has shown that workouts that induce high levels of discomfort increase pain tolerance independently of their effects on physical fitness. In a 2017 study, for example, British scientists separated 20 healthy volunteers into two groups. For six weeks, one group engaged in an exercise program consisting entirely of high-intensity interval workouts (HIIT) while the other group did an equal volume of exercise exclusively at low intensity. Testing performed both before and after the six-week intervention revealed that although the two exercise programs resulted in roughly equal changes in aerobic fitness markers, members of the high-intensity group exhibited significantly greater improvement in a time-to-exhaustion test and, separately, in a test of pain tolerance. The researchers concluded that “the repeated exposure to a high-intensity training stimulus increases muscle pain tolerance, which is independent of the improvements in aerobic fitness induced by endurance training, and may contribute to the increase in high-intensity exercise tolerance following HIIT.”
More...from Training peaks.
6. Exercising While Pregnant Is Good For You and Your Baby, Too:
A new study links a mom’s physical activity to her offspring’s lung function.
For years, women have contacted me, fresh off a positive pregnancy test, wondering whether they need to stop working out for fear of doing harm. In fact, the opposite is true.
For starters, it is safe for female athletes and other women who have been physically active before pregnancy to largely maintain their training habits. Research shows that even women who have been inactive should gradually add exercise into their routine for their own health and for the health of their babies.
Beyond being safe, exercise during pregnancy has significant positive benefits to the developing baby. Despite the prevailing myth that vigorous exercise during pregnancy harms fetal growth and development, research, including a 2019 meta-analysis including more than 32,000 women, found that vigorous exercise into the third trimester not only didn’t adversely affect the birth outcome, but also vigorous exercisers had a lower risk of premature birth.
More...from Dr. Stacy Sims.
7. Women in Sport: UNSPORTING: How Trans Activism and Science Denial are Destroying Sport:
When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided in 2015 to allow male born athletes to self-identify into women’s competition it is as if they completely forgot that sport is a biology-based preserve. One glance at a world records chart in any Olympic sport demonstrates the vast difference between male and female performance capacities.
This descent into distorted sports policy did not happen overnight. The book UNSPORTING takes the reader on a dystopian journey that begins with real-life examples of transwomen athletes who are quite aware that they have an inherent advantage over their female opponents and flaunt their pleasure in exercising it.
It then proceeds to describe the political coercion happening in Canada, whereby certain sport governing bodies are promoting a form of “inclusion” so radical that it would enable a male athlete to play in men’s sport one season and women’s sport the next, based upon self-proclamations that cannot be verified. According to these activists, any attempt by competition organizers to ask questions would be considered unethical and hateful.
More from the Runner's Web.
8. Do This 600-Meter Breakdown Workout to Strengthen Your Fatigue Resistance:
Sharpen your speed and build high-intensity fatigue resistance with this simple cut down track workouts designed for improving 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon times.
Whether you’re a first-year runner or a veteran competitor, whether you race 5Ks or marathons, there’s a place for 600-meter breakdowns in your training.
The workout consists of fast intervals of 600, 400, 300, and 200 meters run in descending order. These intervals are short enough to be run very quickly and thus develop the speed and sharpness you need to achieve your race goals. But those 600m intervals are long enough to also test and develop your body’s fatigue resistance at faster speeds. So, by no means is this a sprinter’s workout. Six-hundred-meter breakdowns develop speed in a way that helps you improve your 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon times — not your 100m dash time!
Like all workouts involving very fast running, 600m breakdowns require a thorough warmup. Start with some light jogging, then perform some dynamic flexibility exercises, such as giant walking lunges and standing forward-backward and side-to-side leg swings. Finally, run a few strides (100m runs at 90% sprint speed). Now you’re ready to break it down!
More...from Podium Runner.
9. The Best Time of Day to Exercise:
Men at risk for diabetes had greater blood sugar control and lost more belly fat when they exercised in the afternoon than in the morning.
Is it better for our bodies to work out at certain times of day?
A useful new study of exercise timing and metabolic health suggests that, at least for some people, the answer is a qualified yes. The study, which looked at men at high risk for Type 2 diabetes, found that those who completed afternoon workouts upped their metabolic health far more than those who performed the same exercise earlier in the day. The results add to growing evidence that when we exercise may alter how we benefit from that exercise.
Scientists have known for some time that the chronology of our days influences the quality of our health. Studies in both animals and people indicate that every tissue in our bodies contains a kind of molecular clock that chimes, in part, in response to biological messages related to our daily exposure to light, food and sleep.
More...from the New York Times.
10. Ready, Set, Don’t Get Injured:
Marathon season is upon us for the first time since 2019. But, a doctor warns, “Your body right now is not the same body you had two years ago, so you’ve got to pay attention to that.”
The pattern is a familiar one for sports medicine doctors, orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists. Marathon season — usually a stretch lasting from mid-August to December — means more patients.
This year, of course, is the first time since the fall of 2019 that many runners are returning to start lines around the world, in hopes of feeling something resembling normalcy. They will be joined by a swarm of new runners: those who laced up their shoes in the past year and a half when running outdoors became the easiest, and sometimes safest, option for exercise.
More...from the New York Times.
11. How Much Exercise Do We Need to Live Longer?
Two studies suggest the sweet spot for longevity lies around 7,000 to 8,000 daily steps or about 30 to 45 minutes of exercise most days.
To increase our chances for a long life, we probably should take at least 7,000 steps a day or play sports such as tennis, cycling, swimming, jogging or badminton for more than 2.5 hours per week, according to two, large-scale new studies of the relationship between physical activity and longevity. The two studies, which, together, followed more than 10,000 men and women for decades, show that the right types and amounts of physical activity reduce the risk of premature death by as much as 70 percent.
But they also suggest that there can be an upper limit to the longevity benefits of being active, and pushing beyond that ceiling is unlikely to add years to our life spans and, in extreme cases, might be detrimental.
More...from the New York Times.
12. How to taper right to be fit and ready for your marathon:
The final weeks of marathon training are less about cutting back and more about fine-tuning and building confidence.
I am not keen on the word ‘taper’. There, I’ve said it. The word is synonymous with cutting back or reducing, and often brings anxiety and a feeling of rustiness. For me, the key to getting it right is to reframe it and to look at it more holistically, beyond the generic rules.
Tapering is a process of cutting back training so you can absorb the hard work you’ve done in the peak weeks of training. The goal is to get you to the start line feeling energised and ready to perform, but without losing fitness. Marathon running requires you to get fitter and stronger, but it also demands that you deliver that fitness on one day. So the taper should, in theory, make your race-day performance a little more predictable.
More...from Runner's World UK.
13. Are You Eating Enough Carbs After Your Run?:
A new study out of the University of Montana finds that carbohydrates from just about anywhere do a good job of muscle glycogen recovery, as long as the numbers add up.
As early as the 1850s, scientists have been studying glycogen, a unique energy storage system for carbohydrates, in the human body. About 70 years later scientists discovered an apparent link between fatigue in marathoners and carbohydrates as a fuel source. But it wasn’t until the 1960s that it was confirmed that muscle glycogen played a major role in endurance performance.
Since then? Scientists like Brent Ruby from the University of Montana argue that the whole conversation has become oversaturated with fad diets, quick fixes, and recovery products marketed with unsubstantiated claims.
More...from Dr. Phil Maffetone.
15. New Research Highlights the Importance of Hydration for Your Heart:
Keeping up on your fluid intake may help prevent heart failure, so drink up! .
Keeping up on your fluid intake may help prevent heart failure, according to research presented at the recent European Society of Cardiology meeting.
A good rule of thumb when it comes to hydration is to aim for about 60 to 80 ounces of water daily.
Keeping up on your fluid intake is an important part of race performance and training recovery, but here’s one more reason to keep emptying that water bottle: It’s good for your heart.
Maintaining good hydration over time may slow down age-related changes within the heart that lead to heart failure, according to research presented at the recent European Society of Cardiology meeting.
More...from Runner's World.
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