[T]oday I ran on the treadmill for 60 seconds. Awesome, huh?
I saw this piece in the New York Times about the four minute workout and decided it was time for me to try it out. So, 60 seconds of running at a 6.0 pace on the treadmill and it felt great. I haven’t run that fast for even 10 seconds since about 2006. It was fun even if I could feel how chubby I’ve become as I bounced up and down. I took two D-Ribose caps afterwards and stretched. So far so good.
This is a quote from the New York Times blog:
Thanks to an ingratiating new study, we may finally be closer to answering that ever-popular question regarding our health and fitness: How little exercise can I get away with? The answer, it seems, may be four minutes.
I noted this too, in the comments underneath the New York Times article:
The information in this article is not leading-edge.
If you google Phil Campbell and “Sprint 8” or “Peak 8,” you’ll learn a lot more about high-intensity interval training than is in this article. The best protocol is, on a bike or elliptical, three minutes of light warmup, then a 30 second sprint at maximum intensity followed by 90 seconds of very light “moving rest.” Then you sprint 30 seconds again, rest 90; and then do it again. After the eighth sprint, you warm down with 2.5 minutes of “moving rest” on your machine. The entire workout is 20 minutes, and it should be done three times a week.
What is great the Sprint 8 protocol is that it has been extensively researched down to the level of the mitochondria and, as Loeber writes, HGH. There is a (lengthy) interview of Campbell by an MD on Youtube that explains the test results and the remaining uncertainties. Nothing there contradicts this NYT article but that discussion goes a lot further; and it explains why intervals longer than 30 seconds, rests longer than 90 seconds, etc., are suboptimal.
I’m gaining weight and want to do something about it. Methylation and chelation protocols both call for exercise and I know it’s important to my recovery. My exercise intolerance is pretty severe though – I crash right after exercising and am dragging the day after too. My dad has been sending me articles about the benefits of short interval training for years but until today that was sitting on the shelf.
According to Freddd, the carnitine and dibencozide I’m taking should be restoring my endurance. But, I don’t think it’s happened yet.
I like what Mark Sisson says about sprinting here (good) and cardio here (bad) – very consistent with the four minute workout theme. There’s some more support for this idea in the Tabata method too:
Tabata regime
An early version of HIIT was based on a 1996 study[6][7] by Professor Izumi Tabata (田畑 泉) et al. initially involving Olympic speedskaters,[8] uses 20 seconds of ultra-intense exercise (at an intensity of about 170% of VO2max) followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated continuously for 4 minutes (8 cycles). The exercise was performed on a mechanically braked cycle ergometer. Tabata called this the IE1 protocol.[9] In the original study, athletes using this method trained 4 times per week, plus another day of steady-state training, and obtained gains similar to a group of athletes who did steady state training (70% VO2max) 5 times per week. The steady state group had a higher VO2max at the end (from 52 to 57 ml/kg/min), but the Tabata group had started lower and gained more overall (from 48 to 55 ml/kg/min). Also, only the Tabata group had gained anaerobic capacity benefits.
I’m going to try Sprint 8 tomorrow and will post updates in the comments below.
UPDATE:
I completed five days in a row using the Sprint 8 program on my treadmill to do an average of three 30 sec sprints and feel like it is going remarkably well. I took D-Ribose after each of my micro workouts and it really helps to clear my brain each time. Today, I came across this post by Alex on FDC:
D-ribose and normal sugar are completely different and don’t do the same thing in the body, if you do well on d-ribose then your krebs cycle has issues you are not recycling atp properly and this is normally due to magnesium levels in the body being too low, it can be low levels of some of the b-vits as well but it is more likely to be magnesium levels.
D-ribose is poor mans atp, it cannot be recycled in the body so it is a quick hit but used to work wonders for me.
An ATP profile test will tell you why your krebs cycle is not working, but rather than spend that money up your magnesium to much higher levels, I take 2gm per day and since I have taken than dose (more than 2 years) I have not needed d-ribose.
Some doctors believe that the core issue with CFS/ME is krebs issues, in my case I would agree, the other main area for me with energy levels is adrenal put krebs and adrenal issues together and you are basically in hell, been there done it, not a good place at all.
D-ribose should be a near instant hit 5-10 minutes used to see me going from lying on the floor asking my wife to make me a black coffee with d-ribose in it, to standing and able to talk properly again.
So I’m feeling better and better about the use of D-Ribose. Yesterday, I also used it after a 45 minute horseback ride and it was one of my most functional days ever, post riding. Seems to me that if I take the ribose before and during a workout it just encourages me to overexertion. So yesterday, I took one ribose before riding and five afterwards.
Today, I’m going to experiment with the magnesium boost Alex mentioned.