Flat-out Sprinting

I read this story (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8429518/Sprints-better-than-marathon-for-heart-health.html) when it came out last month.  It shows how multiple, maximal effort sprints had similar effects on health compared to long duration exercise.  But after chatting with some people in the gym, I have a couple of problems with the practical implications of it…

• Maximal effort sprints are not simply shorter duration exercise, but they are much more intense.
• Maximal effort sprints are bloody hard work and they make you feel horrible (vomiting is a common thing afterwards!)
• The vast majority of people don’t know what maximum effort is and they never go anywhere near it.
• If I got the everyday people in the gym to do maximal effort sprints 3 times a week, 99% of them would not come back after the first time.

Fantastic exercise, but not maximum effort sprints.

So while brief, intense bursts of exercise is beneficial (and personally, I much prefer them to long duration, steady exercise), there is a time and place for them.  And that time and place is in people who are physically and mentally capable of doing it.

Unfortunately, these days there are fewer and fewer people who are actually capable of safely putting in maximal effort sprints.  Either their weight or lack of body awareness/coordination makes tripping a real danger, or they are so heavy they can put joints at risk.

And then there are very few people who actually know what maximum effort is, and how to do it!

As a real life example, I have trained with a guy who is much fitter than I am.  He just simply does-not-stop.  He can just carry on going for hours and hours.  But when we did 10 second sprints, he could not go any faster than his normal pace!  He just could not switch his brain out of “steady pace” and into “flat-out pace”.

He knew how to push himself longer, but not harder.

Now personally I think that everyone should learn how to push themselves harder (it makes you a fitter, stronger, better person).  But that was not what people were taking away from this news story. 

They were not walking away telling themselves

“I need to push myself as hard as I possibly can”.

Instead, they were walking away thinking

“I only need to do about 5-10 minutes, then I can go and put my feet up.”

They were taking away the message that they could be even lazier and do even less work than they already were.  Taking away the wrong message is always a problem when it comes to only reading the headlines, but never the deeper story.

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A couple of weeks ago I explained how many people go to the gym, but don’t get the improvements in their weight/health that they want (click here for the article).

And guess what?  The government has just agreed with me!  Click here to read about the report explaining how back in the sixties, we:

• Didn’t go to the gym.
• Ate fatty foods.
• Were much slimmer/healthier than we are today.

Why?  Because we had much higher Background Activity Levels.

If we just got off our bums and moved more (it really is as simple as that!), I would be virtually out of a job!

But until that day, if you need help, motivation, advice etc, just contact me by clicking here.

With nearly two thirds of the UK population classed as overweight or worse, a very common goal in the gym is to “lose weight”.  It is February, and the New Year influx has mostly died away now, but loads of people who joined to “lose weight” have unfortunately failed to do so.

They are coming to the gym 3 times a week, their diet is “pretty healthy“…so what is going wrong?

Here is one common reason…

To lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume.  So you should be all about maximising your calorie burn.  People often make a simple mistake:

Thinking about exercise and calorie burning only when they are in the gym.

Don’t make this mistake and isolate and compartmentalise your life like that.  Just as our bodies are single complex interacting systems and not just a “bunch of parts”…our lives are a single complex story, not just a “bunch of parts”.

Example

Let me give you an example of 2 hypothetical identical twins.  They are exactly the same as eachother.  They have the same lives, same jobs etc.  They only differ in their Peak and Background Activity levels.

Person A

• Peak Activity – Train for 1 hour, 6 times every week.
• Background Activity – Because they train hard so often, they just relax and put their feet up the rest of their spare time.

Person B

• Peak Activity – Train for 1 hour, 3 times every week.
• Background Activity – Equal measures of sitting around and gentle walking about.

Remember, other than the above, these 2 people have exactly identical lives.  So who is going to lose weigh quicker?

The simple answer would be Person A, because they go to the gym twice as much as Person B!  They must lose weight more easily!

So lets do some rough and ready maths to see if that is the case.  First of all, we need to assume:

• There are 168 hours in every week (24×7=168)
• They both sleep 8 hours a night, or 56 hours per week (7×8=56)
• They both work sitting at a desk for 37 hours per week
• They both have 75 hours left in the week for training/leisure/sitting/walking etc (168-56-37=75)
• They both burn 60 calories per hour asleep
• They both burn 102 calories per hour in work
• They both burn 68 calories per hour when sitting
• They both burn 612 calories per hour when training
• They both burn 224 calories per hour when walking

If I plug all the above info into a spreadsheet and look at the numbers over 1 week, we get the following results…

Calories burned over 1 week (click to enlarge)

(I know the above is not a very realistic example, but it demonstrates the point I want to make very well).

You can see that although Person A has a Peak Activity level twice that of Person B, they are are not going to lose weight as quickly because their Background Activity level is so poor.

And this is the mistake made by many people.  They think:

“I go to the gym regularly, so I don’t need to bother about anything else”.

For general health and fitness, going to the gym a couple of times a week won’t cut it.

You need to try to live and active life.

Our bodies evolved when we were still cavemen to deal with the following Background and Peak Activity levels:

• Background Activity – Walking miles every day, tracking animals, securing territory borders, gathering and preparing food and drink, making and repairing tools and clothes etc.
• Peak Activity – Hunting and killing animals most days, fighting for your life against rival tribes most days etc.

Our bodies are simply not designed to sit around at a desk/computer/TV all day.  But this is the habit that most of us have fallen into.  And this is why nearly 2 thirds of us are overweight or obese.

So the simple truth is, to improve your health, fitness and bodyweight, change your behaviours and habits and increase your Background Activity levels.  It is very simple to do and there are millions of ways to do it including:

• Use your car less than you do now
• Park your car further away from your destination than you do now
• Avoid all lifts/escalators
• Sit down less than you do now.  Get off your arse and walk about a bit every 10 minutes at least!
• Get a backpack and carry more/heavier loads when out shopping for your fresh fruit and veg
• Take a real pride in the fact that you physically move more than the people around you.

Put simply, all the above can be boiled down to a simple line:

“Always avoid the easy option”.

Live your life by this rule, and you will have the foundations of a healthy and fit body.  And with the right foundations, you can build up to anything!

As I have said before (click here), to change ourselves physically, we have to change our behaviour and habits.  To change anything successfully, we need to know the starting point.  A simple but effective way to find out a persons current activity levels is to look at their Peak Activity and Background Activity.   

So what the hell are they? 

Peak Activity.

Peak Activity

The relatively brief periods of time when you are working significantly harder than normal.  Your blood is pumping, you’re breathing heavy, your muscles are working hard and you are generally working harder than usual. 

Examples include: 

• Training sessions
• Gym sessions
• Running for your life from a mad axe-man

Background Activity.

This is every other waking hour.  The normal level of activity that you experience during your waking hours that is not taken up by Peak Activity. 

Background Activity

Examples include: 

• Your day job
• Your leisure time before and after work
• Pottering round the shops
• Whatever you tend to spend your days off doing

“It is about what you are doing, and how hard you are doing it.” 

I have spoken to many people who say they go to the gym 4 times a week, but they don’t actually do any real work.  They might just sit on a bike peddling slowly while watching the tv, or they may turn up to a training session and just “go through the motions”.  This can not be counted as Peak Activity, as it is not any harder than their normal Background Activity. 

Having said that, a firefighter might go to his/her day job and work incredibly hard to save someone from a burning building.  While a “day job” is usually classed as Background Activity, the work they do in this particular situation defiantly is Peak Activity. 

Once you have an honest idea about your Background and Peak Activity levels, you can start adjusting them to suit your own personal goals.  Exactly how you adjust these levels will depend on: 

• What your goals are
• What time limit you have
• How far from your goals you are
• How important your goals are to you

I’m going to talk a bit more about Background and Peak Activity in the next couple of posts, so check back again soon, or just subscribe using the RSS feed or email subscription (they should be somewhere near the top on the right hand side of the page). 

As always, if you have anything to say about this or anything else here, just leave a comment below.