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Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

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Re: Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

#41

As an anecdote of one, I was doing moderate intensity endurance exercise for a couple years with only modest improvements in basic cardiovascular metrics that kind of flatlined over time. As an experiment, I switched to high-intensity interval type training for a couple months, which required about half the time to do. All of my cardiovascular metrics immediately changed in a strongly positive way. When I did the old…

You probably spent all that time training your cardiovascular base, which takes a long time to do. Then, you capped them off with anaerobic gains that were only possible with that prior work. For optimum gain you should mix moderate exercise with intense exercise, but the time you put in likely made your later success possible.

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Re: Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

#42

As an anecdote of one, I was doing moderate intensity endurance exercise for a couple years with only modest improvements in basic cardiovascular metrics that kind of flatlined over time. As an experiment, I switched to high-intensity interval type training for a couple months, which required about half the time to do. All of my cardiovascular metrics immediately changed in a strongly positive way. When I did the old…

You probably spent all that time training your cardiovascular base, which takes a long time to do. Then, you capped them off with anaerobic gains that were only possible with that prior work. For optimum gain you should mix moderate exercise with intense exercise, but the time you put in likely made your later success possible.

Exactly.

I did this on purpose this spring.

I had a shitty winter in terms of endurance and was pretty much starting from the gutter in February. Spring and early summer we're stressful so I did mostly Z1/LSD cycling in the form of extended commuting from work to home. Nothing excessive though as stress was plentiful.

The estimated fitness or the Garmin estimate didn't budge much.

Once vacation started I kept this on for few weeks to recover and after that added few harder sessions in a two week period. Few weeks after this I felt the change and Garmin also estimated 6 mil's of added VO2MAX in a week.

Don't care about the metrics, but the added QOL from this and now I hopefully have a structure for the coming winter not to lose as much of this as the previous.

Re: Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

#43

Does anyone have a recommendation for a dumb watch ( I don't want the fuss or expense of an Android or Apple watch. Garmin makes some nice models but they are still relatively expensive.

2nd hand Garmin or Apple Watch. These things are basically being thrown away and watches like a Gen 6 AW or a Fenix 5 can be found for so little money and they work very well even today if you only care about sports tracking.

I personally cannot stand Apple for sports, which is why I have a AW Ultra 1 AND a Fenix 7 lol. Got both 2nd hand for ~30% of their MSRP.

Personally something like a 2nd hand Garmin Forerunner 55 with a chest based HR monitor is for me the best budget setup. But when shopping second hand you, use what you can find. I often see great deals on things like the Garmin instinct series.

2 years ago I got a Fenix 5 for 180 and it was amazing for me. Just turn off all the "smart" features.

Re: Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

#46
High-intensity exercise is obviously good, but beware of the trap of doing just high intensity exercise and doing it too frequently - the body does not handle that amount of stress particularly well, and it will be counterproductive to your health.

Low intensity exercise that holds your aerobic base is vital as well - and for a well-rounded exercise week, it should constitute the majority of your exercise time.

That is not to say that you should neglect higher intensities, it's just that you cannot do them as often due to the disproportionate amount of fatigue they generate.

Re: Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

#47
post #37
post #34

It's interesting that they characterize a 30-second cycling effort as "all-out" when any cyclist knows it's impossible to go "all-out" for that long. You can go really all-out for a few seconds before your whole metabolic process needs to switch modes. A 30-second effort has to be paced. "All-out" intervals are very effective but for me they mean 4 seconds out of every 30 seconds.

You might need to talk to a doctor if you can only go flat out for 4 seconds before having to slow down. You may put out more power during the first few seconds, but you should be able to go substantially longer than this before falling into the limitations of aerobic capacity.

I assumed this was about uphill cycling, which depending on gradient checks out to me. It's also a function of bike, cargo, and cyclist mass. Lighter cyclists find climbs easier.

Re: Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

#49

As an anecdote of one, I was doing moderate intensity endurance exercise for a couple years with only modest improvements in basic cardiovascular metrics that kind of flatlined over time. As an experiment, I switched to high-intensity interval type training for a couple months, which required about half the time to do. All of my cardiovascular metrics immediately changed in a strongly positive way. When I did the old…

You’d think more athletes and marathon runners would be living past 100.

It’s always that lady who chilled all day who says laughter is how she lived so long!

Re: Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

#50
post #35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds exactly like what one should do for, say, couch to 10k: build a solid base in "zone 2" (low aerobic), which also serves not just as a cardio foundation but also builds the body's ability to withstand effort and impact. Then once the base is built, to make any progress one needs stronger, more focused stimulus, so you introduce interval training at high aerobic (tempo and threshold paces) as well as anaero…

Are you able to point out which video explains how to find your current bottleneck? I suspect its something I would find quite useful! Unfortunately most of the videos have quite "clickbaity" titles, which makes it hard to figure out what they are about.

I don't know which video it is either, but what I've found helpful is checking aerobic decoupling. If your heart rate is drifting upward significantly over the course of an hourlong easy run despite not increasing your pace or power, then the bottleneck is probably your aerobic engine. I don't track it daily because it's a noisy metric, but looking at the overall distribution is useful.

After that it's probably determining your LTHR accurately (don't just accept what your Garmin or Apple Watch says it is). This gives a better sense of how hard to push on your hard days, and it's also useful to see what % of HRmax your threshold lands at.

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