Marjaana (00:00)

So we often hear do we prescribe 3030s ⁓ throughout the year also in the base So just to make it clear, this is the reason we're wanting to raise the ceiling already in the base season

Paul Warloski (00:41)

Hello and welcome to the Athletes Compass podcast where we navigate training, fitness and health for everyday athletes. Ever wondered why coaches love prescribing 30-30 intervals, those brutal half minute bursts followed by half minute recoveries? They seem short, almost too short, yet they leave you gasping and deliver huge fitness gains. In this episode, we're diving into the science of why these micro bursts are so effective.

how they stack up against longer intervals and when the endurance athletes should use them to boost power in VO2 max without overcooking themselves. So first of all, Paul, since you literally wrote the textbook on HIIT intervals, can you explain something basic to us? How do intervals work to create adaptations in the body system? For example, how can doing short minutes long intervals

help an Ironman athlete or a gravel racer who's running or riding for several hours.

Paul Laursen (01:41)

Yeah, it's a great question, Paul. And you wouldn't think initially, like you think almost like that it violates the principle of specificity, right? That we're taught is really key in terms of what you want to do to optimize your performance. You should be doing something specific to that event. And of course you should, but these, this is kind of a different way of thinking. You think sort of human physiology first.

And what you're doing when you do these ⁓ short intervals, we call them 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off, for example, is you are, first of all, engaging these larger motor units. You've probably heard of, the listener, you've probably heard of that you've got slow twitch fibers and fast twitch fibers, right? So your slow twitch fibers, those are your all day muscle fibers in your body that go and go and go all day long. And then you've also got these

fast twitch fibers, which are like your sprint fibers. And they're very powerful, but they fatigue very quickly. Now the cool thing about the fast twitch fibers is that they can adapt. They adapt if they're stimulated properly and they're big and powerful too, right? So the more you can engage in these large fast twitch muscle fibers, what winds up happening if you do it repeatedly, like in a 30-30 exercise is

you start to turn them in more like the slow twitch muscle fibers. You develop fatigue resistance in them. And ⁓ the cool thing about that is remember they're big and powerful. They're producing big, lots of force, lots of power. that's kind of the, we call that the peripheral system, peripheral aerobic system or peripheral adaptation. So you do that.

The other cool thing when these are repeated on and off, on and off, on and off, is that you start breathing really hard and your cardiovascular system, heart and lungs, they start being engaged more. So you actually wind up, as you mentioned in your introduction, you start going to VO2 max. So you start to work towards the maximal engagement of the cardiorespiratory system. So two sort of areas, both,

peripheral fast twitch muscle fibers and central heart and lungs that will adapt. And if you just don't get the same bang for buck, then if you were just going to do that specific steady state training all the time. So this is a way to ultimately raise your ceiling, ⁓ raise the floor and the ceiling of your overall capacity. And that's why they work so darn well. That's why they're in Athletica.

Paul Warloski (04:34)

Yeah, yeah. We're definitely getting to that. So let's talk about the differences between these 30-30s, the micro intervals, and how they might be more effective or differently effective at accumulating time near VO2 max than let's say like a four by five minute kind of interval.

Paul Laursen (04:52)

Yeah, so four by five minute interval. ⁓ These are kind of long intervals, also very effective. in that situation, you're typically doing these at the power output or running pace that is associated with your VO2 max. So let's say for argument's sake, let's call that 300 watts in your standard well-trained

athlete and you say you're so you're going at 300 watts for four minutes and you you're getting you producing a lot of lactic acid lactate and that you really feel the burn in these and You maybe you take two minutes rest and do that again The get start to get start to get pretty difficult. But again, remember you now you've you've you've kind of clamped

your power output or pace at that 300 watts. You haven't gone any higher than that. Now compare that to the short interval one. You might be doing those, say, if you're at 300 watts for your long interval, you might go up to say 350, even maybe, you know, 380. And ⁓ in that situation, where we let off with, you're now engaging these larger motor units, these larger fast twitch muscle fibers.

In both situations, you're probably going towards VO2 max. rate's probably beating the same and your overall central load is probably the same. But in the short interval example, you've engaged those larger fast twitch muscle fibers just a little bit more. And in HIIT science, the parent company of Athletica.

What ⁓ Nicky Omquist and Bent Rolstad, they wrote this fantastic blog for us where they summarize these research papers that they did. And what they did is they compared the exact ⁓ intervals that you just described, the long intervals versus the short in well-trained cyclists. And they showed just kind what I was talking about, that the well-trained cyclists, were engaging the higher power outputs for the 3030s.

And not only were they able to do that, they gained more ⁓ improvements. They adapted better for the short intervals versus the long intervals. ⁓ And it's probably because, again, they lifted the ceiling ⁓ in the short interval work compared to the long interval work. So just that little bit of being able to kind of dig in

and get into those larger motor units is why they're probably the superior intervals session if you had to make a choice in terms of getting more bang for buck. That's what the study showed as well.

Paul Warloski (07:51)

So let's dig into the weeds just a little bit more. Just for those science nerds out there, what happens in the muscle, like fiber recruitment or signaling, during those short interval formats that might differ than the long work intervals?

Paul Laursen (08:09)

Yeah. So, ⁓ the signaling will be similar in both because, the signal, if we look to the molecular signals that are happening in there, the big one is called AMPK. And it's the reason why it's called AMPK is for those that want to nerd out, it's ⁓ when ATP is really broken down, it breaks down to adenosine triphosphate to diphosphate ADP and then adenosine monophosphate

So basically all the phosphates are ripped off this adenosine molecule. And then that signals AMPK, the kinase. And that is the key signal that tells that muscle fiber, hey, we need more mitochondria in us because I didn't like getting really low in energy and we want to prevent that energy decline in the future. So all of a sudden now you've got this AMPK signal.

It signals PGC1 alpha and now all come these mitochondria. might have heard of mitochondria. These are the powerhouses, the organelles of the cells that are there to produce energy ⁓ that's key for aerobic life on this earth. And now you can do your intervals at that much higher of a cap. Now, again, remember the key difference in your long intervals versus the short intervals.

And again, this is in the blog post with Nicky Almquist and Bent, is they like the power output is higher because it can be on the short intervals. So you've, you just think about like you've theoretically engaged a higher or a larger motor unit, right? ⁓ So, and that's kind of the whole purpose. Now, David Bishops just wrote this fantastic review on the whole thing. And he's, he's basically come up with this blanket statement.

And all the presentations I'm doing around the world, the Olympic organizations accept, I'm talking about this. basically, David is saying that you can turn those fast twitch muscle fibers, making them as fatigue resistance as slow twitch muscle fibers. So that's again why the short interval is just so powerful. Because you can continue to repeatedly stimulate that larger motor unit.

Paul Warloski (10:23)

Hmm.

Paul Laursen (10:30)

and you're it into the fatigue resistance characteristic likeness of the slow twitch muscle fibers. Big mouthful there, but yeah, I hope you get the point, right? Like that's what you want, so.

Marjaana (10:45)

So we often hear why do we prescribe 3030s ⁓ throughout the year also in the base So just to make it clear, this is the reason we're wanting to raise the ceiling already in the base season or start work towards it.

Paul Laursen (11:03)

Yeah, yeah.

Totally and bent is another again the the the group his group is so prolific and he I believe it was his group that also showed how if you just did ⁓ one HIIT session a week in your in your primary sport of interest Basically you were better off kind of coming in. So even if you are in your offseason if you just did once a week

to kind of maintain a few of those adaptations, you basically, you started off at a higher level and then you able to kind of move forward on the build. And that is kind of why even in the base period, especially with triathlon and cycling, you still see one of those interval sessions at least kind of coming in in your week just to keep that ceiling and floor up in the higher level.

Marjaana (11:59)

So let's talk about the ceiling and the concept that like if you're talking about a cyclist or especially triathlete who is not going to be ⁓ anywhere VO2 max intensity in their race, why does it matter for people who are doing TT biking?

Paul Laursen (12:24)

yeah, for sure. Again, and this kind of comes back to where we let off, right? Like it does indeed violate the principle of specificity. And I totally get it folks that you might not think that this has any place, but the whole purpose is to really just look at, what are the needs and demands of my race? I, well, I've got to have a solid aerobic engine working.

I've got a, you know, it's, I need the delivery aspect of my heart has got to be cranking out the, oxygenated blood to get to the muscles. And then my muscles need to all be fatigue resistant. And I need as many slow twitch muscle fibers as I possibly can. So if we're, by actually throwing this puzzle piece into the puzzle, you're raising the ceiling.

Paul Warloski (13:07)

Thank

Paul Laursen (13:14)

raising the floor of your overall ability. And then that makes it so that your time trial performance is easier ultimately. And you lift that as well, right? So for those that use the FTP, if that makes sense in your mind, you'll raise your FTP by doing this. Whereas the other strategy you could do is just do FTP sweet spot work or threshold work all the time. Well, this is a different road.

to Rome ultimately and it's a better road to Rome as we know from the, that key study that Benton and Nicky did.

Paul Warloski (13:52)

a lot of thoughts here because we've gotten a lot of forum questions on the Athletical Forum about this and Marjaana you just brought up the, you know, why do we have 30 30s all year long and as part of our base as well. But let's step back just for a second before we address that, you know, when we're doing 30 30s on velocity or when we're doing them ⁓ in our training programs, what kind of intensity

should the on intervals target.

Paul Laursen (14:24)

Yeah, it's a good point. So remember, I did mention that when we gave the long interval example, like the four minutes, and these are almost being labeled the Norwegian methods I've heard now as well, right? So if you're four by fours, ⁓ those are typically done at the power or pace that's associated with your VO2 max. And that's the VO2 max one. Now these ones are done a little bit higher. So in Martin and I's... ⁓

descriptors of short intervals. These tend to be closer to between 100 and 120 percent. More like, you know, between like upper zone five, zone six kind of range, right? So when we're on velocity, Marjaana programming these, know, as our zone six. So on Athletica, they're your zone six. So just a little bit higher than VO2Max But again, you're not going as long, right?

And we do need to talk about what's happening in the recovery period to enable you to do these higher. And again, this is the key to it all. This is why it works because now you're no longer capped by just doing them in zone five. You're actually doing them in zone six. When you're doing them in zone six, you...

have to be recruiting larger muscle motor units, larger, more fast twitch muscle fibers by default. It just, you won't push the power without those big motor units. ⁓ So that's the trick that we've sort of discovered through these.

Paul Warloski (16:02)

So let's talk about some of the specific questions that we've gotten from the forum. Phil from the forum asks, if my heart rate is not getting over 90 % of max by the end of the set of 3030s, should I try a higher output on with the intervals, higher power in the off intervals, something else? Is fish breathing out of water kind of what we're aiming for?

Paul Laursen (16:28)

It is, yeah, for sure. I'm certainly breathing pretty high by the end. And again, I've, know we've mentioned a couple of times already, but definitely join us on Velocity if you can, or even, you know, and if it doesn't hit your time zone, just drop in there as well and, and perform on and view us. Cause you'll see all of us on there. We're, we're pretty spent and, and we're, breathing pretty hard.

our heart rate is definitely towards max, it's definitely above, it's at least at 95%. So why does that happen? And it probably doesn't happen on set one. And set one, for an example, Marjaana might program in there for us, let's call it, maybe she programs in 73030s. So we do a set of 73030s. And maybe on the first one, maybe it only gets to 90%, because you're on that.

But the second one, because now the whole system is increased. Maybe even in the recovery between the set, your heart rate might get down to 110, 120, but it's still already lifted. And then by the second set, the whole aerobic system is really kind of cranked up. And you should be now towards the VO2 max by the end of it.

So yeah, you should be kind of fish out of water. So to your question on the forum, great one. I would check your zones. may need to, your intensity might need to be a little bit higher. Check that you truly are in that zone six and see if you've got a little bit more juice ⁓ to push down to make sure that you feel really quite challenged and you're getting towards fish out of water.

towards the end of this. Maybe not in set one, but certainly in set two through and onwards, ⁓ depending on how many you can ⁓ string together.

Marjaana (18:26)

Yeah, I think a lot of experienced endurance athletes, the first set is always just a warm up. Get it out of the way and then the second set, that's where the magic happens.

Paul Laursen (18:41)

Totally.

Paul Warloski (18:42)

Marjaana, what do you typically, well, I know typically is not a good word here, but what do you typically schedule for your ⁓ velocity sessions? What do you schedule?

Marjaana (18:54)

Well, it totally depends. Now we have a good group of people who have been showing up for... When did we start with Velocity? A year? So they are asking for a little bit of variety. So I've been playing around all fall with different sets of 3030s, 4020s.

Paul Laursen (19:04)

About a year ago, yeah.

Paul Warloski (19:04)

Mm-hmm.

Paul Laursen (19:10)

variety.

Marjaana (19:23)

Did we do 21? We did 20 tens. So we're playing around and now they've told me to level up the game. So we're going a little bit longer for a change. So we've been doing 60 60s and then Prof helped me to schedule two minute intervals this week.

Paul Laursen (19:47)

My thoughts exactly, my thoughts exactly.

Paul Warloski (19:48)

boy.

Marjaana (19:49)

Yeah. But

Paul Warloski (19:54)

Wow.

Marjaana (19:54)

I try to keep in mind that anyone can join us so that we're not just cranking, you know, four or five times nine 30 30s, but that we split them up so that everybody can join. And then I try to coach them to listen when they have, maxed out.

⁓ Maybe just do two sets today or skip one effort and have a little bit longer recovery. But it's, yeah, so there is no typical set.

Paul Warloski (20:32)

show up and find out. Yeah, yeah. So on the forum, Jokin or Jokin asks, Jokin, okay, asks what are the differences between 30 30s, 30 15s, 40 20s? How do we decide on repeats per set versus number of sets? mean, Athletica prescribes that for us, but if you're...

Marjaana (20:34)

So, what am I gonna do?

Paul Laursen (20:35)

That's right. ⁓

Marjaana (20:41)

Jochen. Jochen.

Paul Warloski (20:57)

If you're working on your own, how do you know how much to do and which ones to do, especially if you are using the workout wizard?

Paul Laursen (21:05)

For sure. So I think by default, go with 30-30. That 30 seconds of rest, we should really define what's happening in the rest period. Because that answers the Jokens question here, right? So the longer you have that rest period, the more that ⁓ the muscle bed...

the specifically the myoglobin in that muscle that re saturates with oxygen and the longer you give to do that the more that dampens your lactate response the hydrogen ion response ⁓ and again if that's that's a real good thing because you want we want to have this aerobic stimulus we want to get back into the large motor unit right so ⁓

The shorter we make that, in your example 30-15, the less capacity we're likely going to have to get back into that larger motor unit. And it's all about the signal of that motor unit, right? Like you want it, we want to continue to signal the larger fast switch muscle fibers. So when we do long intervals, team on Velocity Athletica, when we do even 40s versus 40-20s,

over 30, 30s, we're limiting our ability to get into the larger, more powerful motor units. And ⁓ that's great. ⁓ It's good to have that burn, ultimately. ⁓ This will also, we should talk about the phenotype as well. This will certainly favor the, what we call the diesel athlete, those with lots of slow twitch muscle fibers. But in those that are...

like myself that are more of a hybrid, ⁓ it can be a little bit tough on us and we can feel a little bit of fatigue. We don't tend to recover as well from these ones. So yeah, the recovery ⁓ out between intervals is instrumental in allowing us to do more of these reps and to do these reps of quality to get that signal that we need to make it adapt.

So yeah, so well, I guess we should, so back to the question, you know, ⁓ tinker around is what I would sort of say, start with 30 30s and then see, you know, ⁓ see what happens when you shorten that up. And then last but not least, observe workout reserve. We've had Andrea Zignoli on the podcast before. This is a special algorithm that sits only within Athletica that you can observe and actually see how your workout, ⁓

any given workout is how you're doing relative to the past. And in the case where the workout reserve for these short intervals is hitting the floor real quick, well, that's likely to be associated with a lot of fatigue if it's sitting there down towards zero going negative. And ⁓ so you can see this live. You can see this live on Velocity or on your Garmin unit with the Garmin app ⁓ or retrospectively in your ⁓

in your session analysis. But if it's tanking, then it's probably too much for you. And you almost want to get more towards that zero by the end of your workout, not sort of too early. And it just basically is signifying that you're not prepared for it. Remember, it's always looking back at the last six weeks of your data.

Paul Warloski (24:51)

So that rest period, the 32nd rest period is, is why Athletica ended up settling on 30 30s as its primary workout.

Paul Laursen (25:02)

That's right. Yeah. It's as kind of the bread and butter and also goes back to the study I keep mentioning where, and you know, maybe it's only one study, but it's a nice, it's a study that really supports and backs up a lot of ⁓ contemporary science and understanding in this area. Again, all around the signaling of those larger motor units. So, you know, and again, this is

It all comes back to the individual too. We've just spoken about the differences of the people that, know, the athletes that are going to rock up and do this. Some are going to be twitchy, ⁓ individuals with more fast twitch muscle fibers and others are going to be what we call diesel engines with lots of slow twitch muscle, muscle fibers. And the, depending on what you're good at, you tend to gravitate towards, one versus the other. So if you are endowed.

Gifted with lots of slow twitch muscle fibers if you are a so-called diesel athlete You will you'll love long intervals and you'll you probably won't feel the need to do these short intervals if you are we're good at team sports in your youth and you tend to be you probably got some some Explosiveness in your in your muscles. You probably gonna do better with these shorter intervals and then there's everything in between

So, and this is why there's so many differences of opinions out there on all of this. And it's why even the conversation that we're having right now on velocity and the infighting that we're having with our group to do long intervals and the short intervals, right? you know, it's, this is why. It's because we all love to do what we know we're good at and we're all good at different things.

Marjaana (26:42)

you

Yes, but you might be surprised how many people don't know what they're good at. Right. But let's summarize. So difference between the short intervals and the longer ones like four by four or five by five. ⁓ One is that we hit larger motor units, we can produce more power on this short intervals. Then you talked about the recovery, myoglobin, keeping their stress response.

Paul Warloski (26:59)

Good point.

Marjaana (27:23)

lower on the short ones than longer ones but then depending on who you are if you're a super Ironman ⁓ athlete with lots of ⁓

slow twitch muscle fibers, you might like, and you might do well with the longer ones. Remember that your overall power output is lower, right? ⁓ But I just wanted to mention that sometimes you don't know what you're good at. Like I thought totally that I'm an endurance athlete, like I can put out some big power. So I surprised myself ⁓ when I started doing 30-30s. And like what I've

Paul Warloski (28:04)

Yeah, you can.

Marjaana (28:10)

noticed in myself is that I am ready to rock up for training session after 3030s. And the long-go-ons just kept exhausted for days after.

Paul Laursen (28:24)

right. ⁓ Because that exhaustiveness that you just described tends to be associated with lactic. Lactic acid or a blood lactate ⁓ release it kind of comes down to the sympathetic nervous system and in order to dig deep ⁓ as that intensity becomes more prolonged

at VO2Max say in the Norwegian four by four example, that, you it's a, you have to kind of push the gas down and kind of go into this new level of stress, which is required. And the sympathetic system is, is required for that. And then in the time course following the long interval work, the four by four Norwegian versus the short interval work.

There's what Stephen Seiler actually showed this in his work where, the heart rate variability is diminished in the, ⁓ I believe it's the, like the four hour period that's following the long interval work versus, versus other things that are going to be lower in lactic acid. Right. So you want to, you know, you don't, you got to be cautious with how deep into the stress tank.

you go and it will be like an individual that is going to be diesel engine. They won't be as stressed by it, but for twitchy athletes, they'll be more stressed. you can have a look at, know, Athletica is a great tool because you can actually see how you're going to respond to these things. If you are monitoring your HRV ⁓ using your Garmin ⁓ and you can see how you kind of responding the next day.

So it's pretty cool from that regard.

Marjaana (30:20)

And also the power profile you can kind of let worry I guess you need to kind of know what you're looking at on the power profile but we have good blogs to talk about it but and the athlete profiling primer what's the course called there we go a free course

Paul Laursen (30:36)

yeah, Athlete Profiling Primer mini course. Yeah. Go to athleteeprofilingprimer.com

Paul Warloski (30:39)

yeah.

Paul Laursen (30:42)

and you can actually get a free course, free five day course that actually tells you about what's called your anaerobic speed and power reserve. And you can see this yourself in your charts. So just go to your cycling chart or your running, pace profile.

and you can see there's this incredible analysis that's actually there, right? Just like a sports scientist is analyzing your data. ⁓ And you can actually see what your profile is ⁓ sitting at. it will also tell you if you're missing an all out effort. So it'll remind you, it'll say,

look, your profile looks like this, but it would really help our analysis if you did 10 to 20 seconds all out. Or if you did, you know, we're really, it looks like this, but we sort of need more in the VO2 max range. So it would really help if you went out and did two to five minutes all out. So yeah, it's pretty cool from that regard. But again, you can find out on Athletica.

where you're likely to sit in terms of your predominance of slow versus fast twitch ⁓ fiber pools.

Paul Warloski (31:57)

So last week we talked about how in cross training, strength training is not really cross training. It should be an integral part of your training. How do we incorporate 30 30s or these micro sessions with strength training or long rides? mean, how, how best to program those?

Paul Laursen (32:18)

Yeah, good question. And I think a lot of it relates ⁓ to the, like this, you know, it's kind of called the philosophy of concurrent training. And what can happen in any of these HIIT sessions, long intervals or short intervals, is that you will, ⁓ you know, we've just talked about the stress and this is like a neuromuscular stress. Of course, you get that also with

with ⁓ strength training too. And we alluded to this a little bit in the podcast, I recall. ⁓ So ⁓ what the general rule is, is that there's lots of different ways to skin it. You may be someone that, ⁓ you you almost benefit from what we call a priming effect. So you could do either the... ⁓

Paul Warloski (32:59)

Mm.

Paul Laursen (33:09)

the strength session first in the morning, say for example, and then do a HIIT session in the afternoon or vice versa, depending on what you want to prioritize. And that might go really well for you because you stay primed all day in terms of that whole sympathetic load we discussed. ⁓ Conversely, you might want ⁓ to recover and then try that again the next day. at least in well-trained individuals, what tends to happen is they like to ⁓

kind of almost recover on a take a full day to for easy sort of stuff recovery and Get all the high-intensity stuff out of the way on one day But it's gonna be it's gonna be very individual to your own profile and training status

So yeah, I'm not sure if I didn't really answer the question. The answer is it depends, which we hate, but no hard and set rule. See what works for you.

Paul Warloski (33:59)

It depends, yeah. Yeah. I typically...

No, I think that that's accurate because each athlete responds differently to the training stress. I tend to make the hard days hard for my athletes. And with the caveat, with the understanding that they may not get as high a strength, they may not be able to do as much weight with strength training after doing the intervals. And it might be the same effect because you might be carrying a bit of fatigue.

Paul Laursen (34:15)

Nice.

Paul Warloski (34:34)

⁓ But it tends to work better to do ⁓ the, you know, for many athletes to do them both on the same day.

Paul Laursen (34:44)

Yeah, I certainly prefer it now, but I didn't always know. And I had to, again, with all these things, remember that you are, you the listener are your own and of one experiment. And again, this is, we all want to hand over our program to either.

Paul Warloski (34:47)

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (35:08)

a coach or an AI coach. But at the end of the day, the decisions, these decisions do have to kind of come down to you. You are the NO1 experiment. you know, as we've alluded to already on this podcast, there's so many various individual factors that go into the whole thing. And it's up to you really to ⁓ make these observations in terms of how you're responding or how you're affected by these training and then tinker.

and see how it goes. Athletica is a tool to help guide you. A coach is a tool to help guide you. But at the end of the day, it's your world and you need to make your own sort of observations as to how you're tracking on these things to get the individual factors right for you.

Marjaana (35:55)

And guess what? You can come and join us on Velocity and we'll teach you how to these 30 30s and all these sessions correctly.

Paul Laursen (36:04)

Yeah, there's been so many, so many athletes that have just found it's just, you know, so, so valuable to just get, just to be there. And it's not even us too, right. But it's others that are on the call that are so experienced with these things that put in their two cents and, and, and give you their wisdom. And man, it's, it's the best $5 a month ever spent, I think.

Paul Warloski (36:05)

Yeah.

So for other demographic groups, juniors or masters or other groups of people, do you adjust the 30-30 kind of prescriptions? Are there considerations around recovery or fatigue or injury risk?

Paul Laursen (36:42)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. mean, it comes back to all these individual factors that context over content always, right? various things like, you know, your power and pace profile, workout reserve, heart rate variability, all these factors are again, tools and analytics that help you make your decision. ⁓

in accordance with your context, and there's so much context. So yeah, it's a challenge. It's not easy. I wish there was just this hard and set rule, but that's just not the way it is. That's not reality. And anyone that tells you that it is, it's got to be this way? No. Just not the way it is. Yeah.

Marjaana (37:28)

Run.

Paul Warloski (37:29)

Yeah.

I just had a great post-season conference with one of my junior athletes and I asked her, you know, what her favorite workout of the year was and it was definitely 30-30s and she loved those, you know, so that was like, that's cool. ⁓ What are some indicators that you look for to make sure that athletes are responding correctly or well to the 30-30s and not overloading themselves?

Paul Laursen (37:40)

Yeah.

Marjaana (37:41)

Yeee!

Paul Laursen (37:57)

Yeah, so I love looking at these sessions. You ⁓ typically know when you, like you almost start to know the trace that you're looking for. So ⁓ one is gonna be just this consistency of hitting those 30 seconds at the target power. ⁓ And don't forget the recovery too. I should mention that the recovery between these 30 30s should be passive almost. You should just be turning.

If we're on the bike, you should just be turning your legs over. If we were running, we would be walking ultimately. And the reason we do that as opposed to active is because of that whole myoglobin principle that we spoke about, right? That's going to allow for the resaturation to occur and for you basically to, to control the stress response. So I look for that first and foremost. I look for a clear rise in the heart rate each set and then the like.

Kind like we said, the second set is usually a nice progression on the first, especially in terms of the heart rate. So first of all, I looked for a complete set, a completed set, and ⁓ probably a good recovery heart rate between the sets too. That's another good sign. One of the signs, Marjaana actually picked this out, one of the velocity sessions that we did, there was an athlete whose heart rate just was not falling between the sets.

And she flagged it and she ⁓ rightly asked the athlete if just might want to ⁓ take a couple reps out just to kind of get more in control. So we, yeah, because that's almost a sign that the system's working too hard. There's too much overall stress. So that I thought was a really good move that MJ made on that. But yeah, I think the recovery heart rate's probably the big one.

If it's, yeah, you get a good recovery heart rate between the sets, great sign. You're, you're coping well.

Marjaana (40:00)

Another one is what I've noticed is if the heart rate... So I try to keep track. There can be like seven, eight people, so it's hard always to see everybody, but ⁓ I try to keep track of everybody's data. Sometimes I can see when people have hit their limit is that first the heart rate...

⁓ increases nicely and it's a good response, the first set. Then the second set or third set, they are not able to reach as high heart rate. then that's usually a sign that they've had enough. ⁓ Especially if it's like several beats lower, say like first they go 160 and then they can't, 168 and then they can't even reach 160 on the following set. So then

That's a sign that, maybe you had enough, you know, call it. ⁓

Paul Laursen (41:02)

No, but

that's a great one. Like that's basically what's happening in that situation is the individual can't centrally dig into their, like the power. The power would probably also be lower as well, right? So yeah, they're they're flogged and that's, they're tapping out, which is, yeah, that's enough. should, don't do anymore.

Marjaana (41:19)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

and then if it's a long set, sometimes I see heart rates rising up, but their power is going down because they started too hard and they can't keep over the whole ⁓ long set.

Paul Laursen (41:38)

Yeah, for sure. of these things is really critical as well. So many will often go right out of the gates and maybe they'll be towards zone seven in the beginning. ⁓ that can be problematic as well, right? Because that intensity coupled with the duration is going to really magnify the stress response. And yeah, heart rate will just be too high. yeah, so the pacing of these, when I see like, if you want to know like a

Marjaana (41:38)

Right.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Paul Laursen (42:08)

top athlete like Andy Buescher or Kyle Buckingham, they do these sets and they're doing set one identical to set six. It's just boom, boom, boom, boom. They just hit it and then they walk away. That's textbook elite athlete. We're all working towards our best version of that, but that's as close as we can become to that.

Marjaana (42:19)

Wow.

Yeah.

Paul Laursen (42:34)

Like Cindy Maloney is a classic example, right? She's been on Athletica for four or five years, you know, and she nails, she's always winning. Let's admit, she always wins, right? And she just always nails her workouts. ⁓ like, pretty much, know, set one is the same as set five kind of thing in terms of her level. So it's awesome. We can all work to that.

Marjaana (42:43)

She is?

Paul Warloski (42:44)

you

Marjaana (42:56)

Yeah,

yeah, go Cindy.

Paul Warloski (43:04)

Is there anything else we want to add to this discussion of HIIT and recovery times and intervals?

Anything coming in the future in terms of how we're going to monitor these, you know, with breath breathing shirts or straps or anything.

Paul Laursen (43:19)

Yeah, good call. mean, there's some fascinating stuff that's evolving, right? So we could look to things like, if we really want to look at futuristic, there's the MOXIE, which is the saturation, like the O2 saturation actually from the muscle level. I'm not sure how that's very difficult to develop, I think, but that's out there and a lot of people like that and use that.

I'm not sure how much more you get relative to just actually monitoring the power output. And then there's certainly there's all the breathing work as well, such as the breathing shirts from Timeware, et cetera. And you should be getting, you know, that is another thing that we've alluded to it a little bit, but in addition to a high heart rate, there should be a high ⁓ breathing rate and a high breathing depth or high minute ventilation. And that's the respiratory muscles that get their workout.

And the more we can engage those respiratory muscles and ventilate our lungs, the higher ⁓ potential of our VO2 max, which is of course an important indicator of our performance. So those are, yeah. And then I think the last but not least is probably language. And again, only get that from hanging out with Andrea's Zignoli so much, right? But we're doing a lot in the whole language space and really just trying to understand.

Paul Warloski (44:32)

Mm.

Paul Laursen (44:41)

the depth of intelligence that's behind the words that we choose in any given context ⁓ across the response to training or the future and looking towards our training. So I think there could be some interesting things there evolving in the future.

Marjaana (44:58)

So is AI codes going to read all our HIIT sessions and analyze what we're saying?

Paul Laursen (45:04)

I just, yeah,

there are some fascinating things that that genius of ⁓ ours in Athletica, too, you know, many geniuses in the back, but Andrea is, you showed me some interesting things that we're building for the future ⁓ today and ⁓ maybe next year it'll be out there for all of us to use.

Paul Warloski (45:26)

Sweet.

Marjaana (45:28)

I'm just a little worried that people are blaming me.

Paul Warloski (45:31)

Hahahaha

Marjaana (45:34)

Because they always

say, ⁓ my AI coach is gonna scream at me today. I'm like, just blame it on me.

Paul Laursen (45:39)

That's right. You're the scapegoat, MJ.

Paul Warloski (45:40)

Ha ha ha ha

Marjaana (45:45)

Yeah, that's okay. Somebody's gotta do it.

Paul Warloski (45:45)

Yeah, don't blame MJ.

Paul Laursen (45:49)

Stick with us, team. There's lots of cool things that are being built. These are exciting times.

Paul Warloski (45:55)

Thanks for listening today to the Athletes Compass podcast. Take a moment now, subscribe, share, and let's keep navigating this endurance adventure together. Improve your training with the science-based training platform, Athletica, and join the conversation at the Athletica Forum. For Marjaana Rakai and Dr. Paul Laursen I'm Paul Warlowski and this has been the Athletes Compass podcast. Thank you so much for listening.