HIIT - Sprints on the bike

me on Thursday...

Walking to work the other day I listened to a podcast from Layne Norton - Muscle College Radio - where he was discussing cardio and particularly high intensity intervals.  There has been enough on this blog over years about interval training (e.g. here) and its benefits, but it was interesting to hear this discussion especially as they got into the different pathways in the muscle that were activated by different types of exercise.

There has been a lot of research done on intervals in Dr Jake Wilson's lab where they seem to have a particular interest in bodybuilders looking to gain muscle and lose fat.

Anyway in their experiments they tend to use what they describe as a Wingate bike - a stationary cycle set up for the Wingate test.  You pedal to reach a peak revs per minute and then a load is added to the bike to make it harder....then you go as hard as you can for 30 seconds.  This is not just pdalling hard....this is hitting a hard resistance that gets so hard you struggle to pedal.  Their intervals are not just a few sprints....they are all out to failure efforts.

There is a video of the standard test here - you can see her hit a peak rpm and then the weight falls and she goes as hard as possible for 30 seconds basically just about failing at the end.



Here is another which explains it a bit




What is striking is that this is not your average sprint....this is tough to failure... hard work.  It may be that this sort of intensity is not strictly needed, but it does make you question just how hard you are actually working!

The podcast gave an idea for how to do this on a normal stationary bike

• warm up 
• start to cycle going faster and faster
• when you are at a max rpm, pump up the resistance level as high as possible 
• keep going as long as you can until you fail

It is not a perfect substitute but it works well enough.   I tried it yesterday for a series of sprints and it gave a massive leg pump.....

Interesting how hard this is...and how similar - in the to failure aspect - to that other HIT.

Also check out Clarence Bass new piece on intervals with weights