If you have heard of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) you may feel that this is what you need to amp up your aerobic workouts. Well, maybe; maybe not.
HIIT, when done right, involves really high intensity intervals. Like at an intensity that most of us don’t care to work out. Like gasping for breath and honestly wishing it was over. Unfortunately, anticipating a workout like that may motivate you enough to actually do it. Because, really, who wants their workout to be painful?
But the good news is that interval training has always been a good way to increase the effectiveness of your workout. Interval training, not HIIT. What is the difference, you ask? Interval training merely involves changing the intensity at intervals during your workout. The hard intervals don’t need to be at 85 – 90% of maximum. You can go from 20% of maximum to 30% of maximum and still have a more effective workout than a steady state workout where you maybe work at 25% of maximum all the time. The reason is that this increased demand on your heart just when it was starting to get efficient at it’s current level of work builds the heart’s strength.
What might an interval workout look like? You might walk two blocks, then jog a block, then back to walking another two blocks, and continue to alternate. You might alternate between jogging a block then running a block, whatever the difference between jogging and running is for you. You might run up and down hills. You decide what you want to do. Just remember to let your rest intervals be slower than your normal steady state exercise, so you actually recover from the faster, harder intervals or you will exhaust yourself before you can finish. But your interval workout does not need to be as long as your normal workout, because it is a more intense workout as a whole.
If your workouts are getting stale, try incorporating an interval day and see if it doesn’t help!
Random question: Are there better/worse exercises to help with lower back pain? Or maybe the real solution might just need to be a trip to the chiropractor… but it got me to thinking about exercises to help with back support, etc.
I have an exercise for lower back strength that took me from having lower back pain every single morning when I woke up to rarely having back pain.
Back leg lifts: Either lean on a table or put your palms on a chair seat – you want your body to be bent at about 90 degrees at the waist. Then slowly lift
one leg until it is as close to straight out in back as you can get it. Lower it slowly. Repeat with the other leg. As you get stronger, you can pause for a second at the top or lower even more slowly.
The two secrets to this exercise are only doing it with your back bent, because that prevents it from irritating your lower back while you try to strengthen it, and lowering very slowly, because it is the lowering phase that really builds muscle strength.
Do the exercise about 8 – 12 times on each leg two or three times a week and you should feel a big difference in less than a month.
As far as the chiropractor, if you have inherited my back, you should probably be on a maintenance schedule of visits. I go once every 6 weeks and my back has stayed very good for years now. If I hurt it doing something dumb, I go in and usually just have to get it adjusted once and it settles down and is fine. Of course, I also do yoga to keep my back limber.
Thanks!
The physical therapist showed me something today, too. She said that when your back is hurting your transverse abdominus muscle doesn’t work like it is supposed to. The transverse abdominus is the inner muscle of all your abdominal muscles. It’s job is to contract slightly before any movement that involves your core. So when it isn’t working well and you move before having that contracting muscle supporting your spine, it is easy to re-injure your spine. So here is what she said to do to make sure you are isolating your transverse abdominus.
Get down on hands and knees with your back neither arched nor humped up, but just in a normal relaxed position. Relax your abdominal muscles so your belly contents sort of just hang there. Then pull your belly button towards your spine. In order to do this, you have to engage the transverse abdominus. Once you can recognize when that muscle is working, as opposed to other abdominal muscles, you can tighten that muscle at will, sort of like doing Kegel exercises. Another way is to picture drawing those two bones on the front surface of your pelvis toward each other. Of course, they don’t move, but if you feel like you are drawing them together, that is also isolating the transverse abdominus.
Make sure you work those muscles a bit every day to keep them doing their job the way they should.