Published May 2, 2004 12:00AM
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Outside magazine, September 1999
Just Add Intensity Ahtletes dread intervals because they’re tough. They’re also worth it. By Terry Mulgannon RUNNING | SWIMMING | CYCLING It always sneaks up on you. despite the usual reassurances, what begins as a convivial workout with a friend all too often subtly takes on a competitive tenor. Say you’re cycling. At the base of a canyon climb your friend silently pulls away and, just about the time your quadriceps implode in an effort to keep pace, disappears into the shadows. He eventually eases up, but the show of pity only makes it worse. Some artful prodding reveals that your pal, who devotes the same amount of time to working out as you, has recently sneaked in a bit of interval training—the bastard! He’s quietly discovered that a simple regimen of sprinting in concentrated doses helps him perform dramatically better in those intense moments of effort that leave an athlete gasping like a drowning man and wincing as limbs turn to molten lead. Painful, certainly, but rewarding like no other type of workout. Just ask Todd Williams, 30, America’s best middle-distance runner, who won the national championships in the 15k last March. “Interval training’s the only way to get faster,” he says. It is also the most effective way to transcend those inevitable fitness plateaus. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that when you become discouraged or bored with a routine, your performance has topped out. That’s where intervals come in—instead of letting that hard-won fitness slide so you can feel good about building back up to peak power, it’s time to punch through the ceiling and make some genuine improvement. Whether the race you’re gearing up for is a spontaneous uphill bike sprint or a spirited run among age-group peers in a 10k, intervals will give you a fighting chance. Under the Hood Intervals are merely a tool to nudge your cardiovascular system from working aerobically—what most of us do most of the time when we run, ride, swim, or whatever—to working anaerobically in strategic bursts. “Anaerobic,” of course, means your bloodstream isn’t getting enough oxygen to help burn your body’s fuels efficiently. The result is that the muscle cells start sucking up glucose to the exclusion of other energy sources, producing lactic acid. Pretty soon your system can’t bail out the acid fast enough, and the buildup puts the brakes on muscle contractions, which is why you can’t sprint indefinitely. “It’s like using the afterburners on a jet,” says Steve Johnson, an exercise physiologist who works with developing riders at USA Cycling and who has snagged eight national road-riding titles of his own. “You’re wasting a lot of fuel, but that doesn’t matter if you’re trying to dodge a missile.” What interval training does is minimize this energy inefficiency by developing more capillaries, which remove lactate from your muscles. Stick with the training, and you’ll notice more gain with less pain. “Interval training improves your body’s ability to accelerate and to tolerate higher levels of lactic acid,” adds Johnson, noting that an elite athlete can handle three times as much of the torturous substance as the rest of us. Panting by Numbers Before you dive into intervals, though, you need to have chalked up at least a month’s worth of aerobic training, four or five hours a week—probably not an issue by this point in the summer. While aerobic training takes place in a range between 70 or 80 percent of your maximum heart rate, intervals will have you chugging along at about 90 percent (see “A Guide You Can Count On,” below), a pace at or above your anaerobic threshold—the point at which your metabolism kicks into turbo-drive. You’ll start out performing just one interval session per week and then jump up to two, swapping them with aerobic days in your existing program. The idea is to go nearly all-out for a specified period and then to rest and do it again. Richard Quick, coach of the Stanford women’s swim team, recommends experimenting with the variables of time, distance, rest, and repetitions, assembling different combinations to find your own best routine. “This is a highly individual pursuit,” he emphasizes, “and you need to find out what works for you.” Whatever you do, don’t confuse difficult with punishing. You want to accelerate into high speed smoothly, for instance, so you don’t pop a tendon or tear a ligament. Lay off intervals every fourth week, and don’t do them for longer than three months in a row. (You can pick up again after two months of typical training.) And if you’re slowing down or feeling sluggish, take a few days off from all exercise. Eventually you’ll start recovering—and performing—faster. Quick also strongly suggests doing a little less than you think you can handle. “The worst thing that can happen is that you start to dread your intervals,” he says. “You want to look forward to your next workout.” Reality Check Of course, you’re never going to love intervals. But to keep yourself motivated, says Todd Williams, try to balance the realities against a mind game. “I know it’s always going to hurt,” he says. “So I pretend it’s a race and tell myself, ‘This is it.'” Though the underlying concepts are the same whether you run, ride, swim, skate, or cross-country ski, the benefits don’t necessarily transfer from one sport to another because the most significant physiological changes occur within the exercising muscles. Accordingly, we’ve assembled interval routines for each of the three most popular forms of aerobic exercise: running, swimming, and cycling. They’re drawn from the very same plans that Williams, Quick, and Johnson use, rendered manageable for those of us who aren’t in training for the Sydney Games. Finally, no matter which routine you use, be sure to keep close tabs on your health and diet. “When you’re in good shape,” says Johnson, “you walk a tightrope. There’s this tension you experience: Am I training too much or not enough? But when it all comes together, you feel great.” © 1999, Outside magazine |