Intensity or Duration: What makes fit happen faster?

It is a great question and, an important one because more and more it seems like there is less time in the day to get things done.  In a world of time crunches and deadlines, life is too busy for time to be wasted.  This is no truer than when working towards a healthier life because every moment we live takes us one step closer to death.  To obtain the highest quality of life, we must make every moment count. Exercise is no exception to this. So how does intensity and duration play into this? Are these interchangeable topics or do they exist independent of each other?

                This conversation can be viewed in two ways: what is best to achieve short-term goals and what will result in a lifetime of healthy living?  The second part of this question is the simplest to answer.  It takes a lifetime to live a healthy life.  Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.  If you believe anything different, I have beach front property in the Himalaya’s I would like to sell you.  Commit to making exercise a life time priority and you are one step closer to maximizing your health and quality of life.  Durable people last, it is that simple.

                The question then becomes; what is best for hitting specific goals along that journey and what is the best method for training to accomplish those goals?  On a side note, breaking down the overall goal of living a healthy life into several Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely (SMART) goals makes achieving the big goal doable.  After the goal is identified duration is measured in two ways: the number of training sessions or weeks or months that will be completed between the initial establishing of the goal and the first progress evaluation.  The second consideration of duration is the length of time for specific training sessions.

                When I help a client establish a SMART goal, the time frame between initial evaluation and first progress evaluation is typically somewhere between four to twelve weeks after beginning the program.  If the client’s goal is to lose body fat, we test body fat percentage and take measurements every four weeks.  For someone looking to improve strength on a specific exercise or as a part of a sports performance program, evaluations are typically every eight to twelve weeks.  Specified goals with consistent, periodic evaluations are crucial to building a life time of health and fitness.

Among fitness professionals, the debate of the importance of Intensity and Duration in improving overall fitness can be quite heated.  The answer to this debate lies in another question: what is the desired performance goal?  The emphasis on intensity or the duration of training sessions is determined by the performance goal.  A person who runs marathons has a different performance goal than a power-lifter.  A person looking to lose ten pounds has a different goal than a person looking to lose one hundred pounds.

                It is pretty simple to understand that a person who wishes to successfully run 26.2 miles needs to focus, first and foremost on duration by basing training on building endurance.  Whereas a power-lifter needs to perform at a maximal intensity for just a few seconds, clearly high intensity training is more important than high levels of endurance.  So what is the average person, heading outside or into a local fitness center simply looking for a healthier body, to do?

                Two concepts of how the body responds to individual training sessions need to be understood: Excess Postexercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) and the hormonal response.  EPOC refers to the amount of oxygen the body needs following a training session.  During exercise the body needs more oxygen to aid in supplying energy for performance than when the body is at rest.  This is also true immediately after training. EPOC is a scientific way of referring to both the length of time and the extra amount of oxygen the body needs to return to its preexercise state.  In laymen’s terms this is called “sucking wind.”  How long and how much “sucking wind” a person does following exercise is one method of measuring the intensity of exercise.  The hard and longer a person remains in an elevated state of EPOC or, the longer you suck wind, the faster fitness levels, and overall health, will improve.

                Before establishing a specific length of time for an exercise session, a basic understanding of hormonal response to exercise needs to be understood; the hormonal goal of exercise is to create an anabolic response.  To put the body in an anabolic state, that is a state in which the body will become stronger and healthier as opposed to a catabolic state in which the body breaks down, becoming weaker and less healthy.  Excessively prolonged duration of exercise can take the body past an anabolic state and into a catabolic one.  Anabolic hormones promote healthy tissue growth and recovery from exercise.  The important anabolic hormones are insulin, insulin-like growth factors, testosterone, and growth hormone. The catabolic hormones are cortisol and progesterone. 

The objective of a quality training session is to work at an intensity that creates of high level of EPOC in short an enough amount of time that the hormonal response of the body stays in an anabolic condition.  So what is an appropriate time frame to maximize the mix of intensity and duration?  Testosterone, the most important of the anabolic hormones, peaks at around forty-five minutes into a training session and is beginning to drop off by sixty minutes.  If an exercise session goes beyond sixty minutes this drop off happens at a faster rate than if the session stopped at sixty minutes.  Prolonging exercise beyond sixty minutes accelerates the process of the body becoming catabolic.  If a training session lasts for two hours testosterone levels have dropped lower than testosterone levels would be one hour after the end of a sixty minute training session. 

The take away from all of this: for most people an intense training session lasting duration of forty-five to sixty minutes is the most beneficial combination.  This exercising at a high intensity for this time frame is more effective then decreasing intensity to the point of prolonging exercise beyond an hour.  Do forty-five to sixty minutes of challenging work not two hours of playing around.  Get in, get out of breath, break a sweat, and get on with life.

My Top Ten Exercises

It seems to me like every month a new list of the best exercises comes out.  Some times this list focuses on a particular body part, or incorporates only one facet of training like body weight exercises.  Usually these lists are set up address a specific demographic group.  It is rare for me to come across a list that utilizes exercises that can address all the aspects of fitness: agility, speed, power, strength, and endurance.  It is even harder to find such a list that provides exercises from different training modalities: body weight conditioning, heavy strength training, plyometrics.  Most such lists target one or two aspects of fitness through just one modality.  This list is different because these ten exercises, alone or in combination with two or three, can be used to train all aspects of fitness, resulting in more complete development of physical fitness and conditioning. 

This is not just about lifting heavier weights or increasing endurance, it is about improving overall fitness and conditioning. As always, consult your doctor before incorporating any of these exercises into a program and be sure to error on the side of caution.  Proper form will create the best results so choose resistances that allow for mastery of form.  This promotes both safety and effectiveness.  Never sacrifice form for heavier weight; doing so is training the ego, not the body.

10.          Push Ups this body weight exercise is typically thought to train primarily the chest, shoulders, and triceps, and it does.  But with proper form the entire group of core muscles: abs, obliques, hip flexors, lower back and glutes will also be engaged, making it an effective total body exercise.  Variations in hand positions, repetition speed, and total repetitions can make this more than just a strength exercise, training agility, upper body speed, power, and endurance.

Push Up Video

9.            Box Jumps this body weight exercise is typically performed as a plyometric, to improve lower body explosive power.  However, changes in starting foot position, midair movement, or completing high numbers of repetitions can change this into an agility or endurance exercise.

Box Jumps Video

8.            BOSU Plank takes the standard plank position and significantly increases the challenge. A standard plank works the chest, triceps, abdominals, hip flexors, glutes, and lower back.  By performing this exercise with a BOSU, these muscles are challenged further by maintaining balance.  It is a great way to provide an extreme challenge to both the strength of the core muscles and the sense of balance.  The ability to maintain proper balance is directly tied to the strength of the core muscles.  This exercise trains both.

BOSU Plank Video

7.            Horizontal Pull Ups when most people think pull ups they think of hanging vertically, which is a great way to train the upper body.  However, by utilizing the Olympic bar in a rack, and changing the position to a horizontal one, the pull up now becomes a direct counter move to any push up or chest press.  Most guys make the mistake putting an emphasis on training the chest more so than the back, creating a rounded shoulder posture.  The chest may be stronger but it appears to be smaller, not larger despite all of the chest work.  Horizontal pull ups directly target the muscles of the upper back that work to keep the shoulders back, opening up the chest, and allowing it to look bigger.  Balancing the strength between the chest and the back is an important key to maintaining proper alignment of the spine, thereby improving posture.

Horizontal Pull Up

6.            Battle Ropes what are battle ropes?  Simply put, probably the best conditioning tool that you are not using.  Like most guys, I find the prospect of running on a treadmill, or using an elliptical to be absolutely mind-numbing and boring.  The little old ladies can keep that kind of boring cardio (no offense to lovely ladies of the geriatric stage of life).  Battle ropes are an incredible to for improving both cardiovascular endurance and explosive power.

Battle Ropes

5.            Pull Ups are one of the best upper body strength exercises, period.  Anyone can sit down at a weight machine and pull a handle down to their chest; it takes far more strength and coordination to pull the body off of the ground and up to a bar.  Typically performed for a low number of repetitions, improving physical strength to perform endless repetitions gives pull ups the potential to vastly improve upper body endurance as well as strength.

4.            Sprints are one of the most effective ways to train the ATP and anaerobic glycolytic energy systems; the systems that perform short-burst high intensity activity. In most sports, the fastest person wins.  If you are looking to improve overall athleticism and sports performance sprinting is a must.  For a person looking to lose weight a short duration-high intensity sprint workout will blast more body fat than any steady-pace endurance activity.  Who sprints? Just the high level athletes and incredibly fit people.

Sprint Video

3.            Squats properly done squats recruit more muscle tissue than just about any other exercise. During a squat every single muscle in legs are working, the abdominals and low back are working to stabilize the core, and the upper back , shoulders, and arms are working to keep the weight balanced in the correct position.  This one exercise engages upwards of 80% of the muscle in the human body.  This translates into incredibly efficient strength training and a lot of calorie burning.  Drop it deep to maximize the benefits: touching the grass at the bottom of the squat will translate into an incredibly mobile and strong body.

2.            Burpees easily the most challenging body weight exercise, burpees combine box jumps, push-ups, and planks into one quick, and explosive motion.  Of all the exercises that utilize just body weight for training, burpees deliver the most bangs for the buck, training both upper and lower body explosiveness as well as hip mobility and flexibility.  The intense nature of this exercise creates a significant elevation in heart rate resulting in cardiovascular and endurance training.

Burpee Video

1.            Deadlifts and squats are often debated between fitness professionals as being the two greatest strength-training exercises.  Usually squats come out ahead in this debate.  However, I rank deadlifts as number one because it is a more technical lift.  The form requires a higher level of mastery and technical skill to lift really heavy weight safely.  Also, with deadlifts, grip strength can be a limiting factor whereas it is not with a squat.  Finally I rank deadlifts as number one because it is way more satisfying to the ego to put a bar on the ground, load it with really heavy weight and pick it up than it is to squat heavy weight.

Deadlift Video