Transcript
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The speaker defines HIIT, explains why it matters as people age, and clarifies the idea of polarized training versus the gray zone. She also breaks down effort levels and recovery without requiring precise heart-rate tracking.
Let's move on to the second key exercise that you are recommending women pay attention to as they get older, HIIT training, high-intensity interval training.That is a term that is used a lot.It is misunderstood a lot.So, why don't you take it from the top?What is it and why is it so important for all of us, but particularly, I guess, for women to do as they get older?
Yeah.So, um globally, Western society has become very comfortable in environments that doesn't challenge the body.Right?We sit in rooms that are temperate.We have food and water available all the time.So, when we ask someone to become uncomfortable, they're like, High-intensity interval training is the uncomfortable part of exercise that really does invoke positive change.So, when we talk about high-intensity interval training, it is where we're looking at polarizing a session, where our intervals are 80% or more of our maximum effort, and our recovery can be anywhere from 1 to 4 minutes at50% of our capacity.
Can I just pause you there, Stacy?Only because the term polarized, some people who are listening maybe haven't heard that.If you could just explain what polarization is, but also, then, when you say 80% and 50%, you're not necessarily implying that people have to get heart rate monitors and measure all this stuff, are you?So, could you just clarify these two things just so everyone's on board with with this as we go forward?
Sure.So, when I talk about polarized, I mean the top end of effort and the very bottom end of effort.We want to stay out of the middle.
Okay.
Cuz the middle is what we call the gray zone, and I mentioned it earlier, where it's too easy to be hard, and it's too hard to be easy.So, you don't really get very much adaptation in that kind of middle zone.So, we want the really hard part and the really easy part.And then we call that polarized training.When I talk about 80% on a scale of 1 to 10, you're hitting an eight, nine, or 10 in our efforts.And for our recovery, we're hitting a four or five in our effort.So, we're really like, "Okay, bring it right on down to really easy, trying to recover fully before we hit the next interval."
This section gives practical examples of HIIT workouts, including EMOM formats, and then introduces sprint interval training as a more intense subset. The speaker emphasizes the difference in effort, duration, and recovery.
So, when we're talking about high-intensity interval training, there's also a subset in there, sprint interval training, which I'll get to in a minute.But, an example, a really good example of high-intensity interval training is something that we like to say, "EMOM, every minute on the minute."So, for 1 minute, you might be doing uh tuck jumps or star jumps.The next minute, you might be doing some kettlebell swings.The third minute, you might be doing some um jump lunges.And then, the fourth minute, maybe you're throwing kettlebell swings back in.The fifth minute's fully off.So, you have 4 minutes where you're working probably 50 seconds.So, you have 10 seconds to go to the next exercise.So, 4 minutes of pretty hard work, 1 minute of full recovery, and then you hit the 4 minutes again.
And that's the full high-intensity interval training.
Right.So, you really it's 4 minutes of work, 1 minute recovery.So, that's high-intensity interval training.If I talk about the subset of sprint interval training, this is where the recovery is really important, and it's longer.So, with sprint interval training, it's 30 seconds or less, as hard as you can possibly go, and then you have 2 to 3 minutes of full recovery because you're trying to be able to do that interval just ashard if not harder.And it doesn't mean running sprint.The sprint term is really about the effort.How hard can you go for 30 seconds or less?It could be running upstairs, it could be kettlebell swings, it could be battle ropes.It could be um running, it could be assault bike, could be rowing erg, it could be uh swimming.Could be any kind of of mode of exercise as long as the intensity is at that 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 for 30 seconds or less.
And then the recovery is 2 to 3 minutes to fully recover your central nervous system and some of your metabolic capacity to be able to hit that interval again.Most people are like, that sounds really easy.So I have to push really hard for 30 seconds, maybe I'll be able to do four or five of those.And they first start doing them, after the second one they're like, "Woof, I'm done.I don't want to do this again."But it's really important to understand that subset versus high intensity interval training because they do two different things.So if we look at sprint interval training, so that's it.
The discussion shifts to how sprint interval training affects insulin sensitivity, GLUT4 expression, myokines, fat metabolism, and blood vessel function. It connects these adaptations to better glucose control, lipid profiles, blood pressure, and reduced visceral fat.
30 seconds or less as hard as you possibly can with full recovery in between.This is such a strong stimulus and stress to the body that it creates a myriad of epigenetic changes.So this means more permanent changes within the skeletal muscle.Most importantly, we talk about the GLUT4 protein.So if we think about um insulin as a key opens the door to the cell to allow glucose to come in, but as we get to be perimenopausal and onwards, insulin doesn't work so well.It's like a rusty key in the lock, doesn't quite open the door.So, that's insulin resistance.We talk about GLUT4 proteins.This is like the secret passageway that opens up and says, "Hey glucose, come on in."So, we're doing that super high-intensity work, we start to express more of those GLUT4 proteins.So, now we have availability of glucose coming in.
And so, we really do get the benefit of better glucose control.The other thing with that super high-intensity work is we now have a greater amount of myokines that are released.So, these are those little hormone messengers that get released from skeletal muscle under work.And what the myokine does is it goes and signals to the liver that we don't need to change the molecular structure of these free fatty acids acids into an esterified fatty acid.So, esterified fatty acids is the form that gets stored as visceral fat.So, instead, the myokines say, "No.We want them to stay as free fatty acids so that we can pull them into the mitochondria to use it as rest."So, it improves our total lipid profile as well.
So, so when you say free fatty acids, you're talking about for in layman's terms, fats, and you're saying that this fat, instead of being stored as visceral fat, which is that sort of harmful internal fat that cakes ourorgans, that is associated with an increased risk of frankly a lot of different chronic diseases, you bypass that basically when you're doing sprint interval training, which so this directly is going to help people with their visceral fat, alsotheir belly fats?Is that fair to say?
Yes.So, that's when we're talking about the metabolic control of things that have changed, sprint interval training is super important to getting that metabolic control.To being able to have better blood glucose, to being able to have better blood lipids, to have less storage of abdominal fat, the visceral and subcutaneous.And because it's such a strong stress, we see the shear stress on the vessels.So the the amount of blood that's running against our blood vessels, it causes more what we call vegf, which is a growth factor that allows our blood vessels to become more compliant, to be able to stretch and andcontract a lot faster.So we're getting that shear stress that's allowing our blood vessels to adapt to then have better blood pressure control.So when we're looking at all the things that happen to perimenopausal woman from a clinical perspective, we see an elevation in our um blood lipids, particularly our LDL and our total cholesterol, a change in our orthostatic tolerance or
actually an increase in our resting blood pressure.We see a change in our blood resting blood glucose cuz we have more insulin resistance.So if we are doing just maybe two of these sprint interval sessions a week, we get these permanent changes, these epigenetic changes, that is going to change that clinical outcome for the good.So we get better blood pressure control, we have better blood glucose, we have better blood lipid profiles.And of course, we have the reduction in the visceral fat gain.
The speaker compares sprint interval training with strength training and explains how each may be prioritized depending on a woman's main concerns. She concludes that the best emphasis depends on whether metabolic health, strength, or body composition is the more urgent issue.
Although this is overly simplistic and of course the body doesn't work like this, right?Can we say that the strength training that we've been through in detail is better for our nervous system and our power and our balance as we get older and the sprint interval training is better for our metabolic health.I know they're both linked.I know you can't separate it like that, but is it is it useful to look at it like that?
Yeah, absolutely.It is very useful to look at it that way because there are when women are faced with what's going on some women are faced with more scary clinical outcomes with regards to what's happening from metabolic standpoint and theymight not be seeing as much decrease in their strength.
Yeah.
So they're going to want to put more of an emphasis on metabolic control.So they're going to lean into the sprint stuff.Most women start to see aesthetic changes of body comp and that scares them more than the clinical because the clinical is just on the edge.So they're going to gravitate more towards the strength training cuz they want the power and the strength and they want more of the aesthetic value of building muscle.So it is that individual choice.It's like but we know these things are happening.It's just when we look at the bell curve there are people all over the place.So from an individual standpoint, it's like what's the most important point right now that we can work on?Is it the metabolic control and the metabolic outcomes?Let's lean into high intensity and sprint interval training.Is it the bone density and the lean mass loss?
Let's lean into the strength training.
Yeah.
And then we'll add the other one back.We'll add the other one down the line.