Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1205: Do the Risks of HIIT Training Outweigh the Benefits?

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

1205: Do the Risks of HIIT Training Outweigh the Benefits? The growing trend of High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). (1:50) What is HIIT? (4:10) HOW did it get big so fast and WHY did people start using it? (5:20) The detriments of HIIT training for beginners. (10:10) The Four Problems and Mistakes Made with HIIT Programs. (15:30) #1 – NOT incorporating Priming properly. (16:10) #2 – NOT having proper programming. (25:06) #3 – Form is NOT at the top of your hierarchy chart. (31:26) #4 – Does NOT prioritize recovery. (37:17) Is HIIT training RIGHT for you? Do the risks outweigh the benefits? (44:51) How does Mind Pump incorporate HIIT training? (48:30) People Mentioned Dave Asprey (@dave.asprey)  Instagram LeBron James (@kingjames)  Instagram   Related Links/Products Mentioned January Promotion: MAPS HIIT ½ off! **Code “HIIT50” at checkout** Mind Pump 1042: The Truth About HIIT- The Good, the Bad & the Ugly Is Warming Up Before A Workout Necessary? - Mind Pump The ULTIMATE Full Body Warm-Up (PRIME Your Workout!) LeBron James takes immaculate care of his body, and the NBA world is in awe of it Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Alright, in this episode of Mind Pump, we talk about a very popular form of training. Hit training! High intensity interval training. Now this type of training stormed the fitness scene in the early 2000s because studies showed that it burned as much or more body fat than doing more types of workouts.

In other words, if you did a 60 minute workout and you compared it to a 20 or 30 minute hit type workout, the 20 or 30 minute hit type workout burned just as or 30 minute hit type workout, burn just as much body fat. Some studies showed even more body fat. It also had less of the muscle loss effects of other types of cardio. In fact, some studies showed that it built some muscle. So it's just really just exploded all over the scene.

But of course, as with everything in fitness, they overdid it and did it wrong. And hit has its own risks and sometimes the risks outweigh the benefits. So in this episode we talk all about hit training, how it started, our experience with it, the benefits, the detriment. We talked about the four problems and mistakes that we see with most hit programs. We think you're going to enjoy this episode.

Now, it's perfect timing because to go along with this episode, we have a 50% off discount of our maps hit program. This is a high intensity and overall training program that we wrote and we created. And it's 50% off all month long IIT 50 no space for the discount. I want to dress high intensity interval. Oh yeah. Good time to bring it up to January. Everybody's trying to burn body fat workout. What's been a growing trend for how long would you say?

When do you guys remember when it came? When did it get? When did it get really popular? I do, I do. I think it's been like 10 years or so many. More than that, more and longer. I remember early 2000s, I wanna say 2001, 2002. I don't know the exact year or whatever, but I remember what happened.

It was like a shockwave heard throughout the fitness space. Was it a specific set? Cause I agree with you. It was a, I remember around 0203-ish around there. shockwave heard throughout the fitness space. Was it a specific set? Because I agree with you. I remember around 0203-ish around there. I'd already been at 24 for a year or two. And I do remember quoting studies myself to present, to telling people they should do it.

Well, yeah, not only that, we started to kind of scale back our hour sessions to 30 minutes thinking that we could just do a hit workout, you know, give the maximal amount of effort in that shorter amount of time. That's right. No, it was, and I believe any SM might have been the one to disperse the information of the study.

Oh, you think so? And might have been. I don't think it was them. I don't think it was. I remember it went company wide. And here, the reason why it went like gangbusters for listeners who maybe thinking why was it such a big deal, up until this point, the only type of cardio

that you recommended or that anybody did was steady state cardio. If I said cardio, that's what it was. It was, get on elliptical, get on a treadmill, get on a bike, 30 minutes to an hour, steady state, burn calories, sweat. High intensity in the orange area. That's a high intensity interval training wasn't done

by anybody except for athletes. Athletes were the only people doing intervals and it was to boost their performance. There was nothing about fat burning or it was never used on. Do you guys remember ever doing hit training on any client before that period time? No, no, not before that.

That's what I'm wondering is what did it, and I don't think it was an ASM. Now was it also around the same time that TABATA training was popular too? TABATA got popular later, and I believe it was through CrossFit, because CrossFit was throwing in. Oh, no, no, no, TABATA was before that.

Was it? Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely, okay. I remember doing TABATA stuff before CrossFit became a thing. So, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, intensity interval training. So this type of exercise or workout is it consists of short intense bouts of near maximal intensity.

So it's high intense, but followed by longer bouts of lower intensity type of work. So to use cardio as an example, because hit training, and I'm sure we'll get into this, there's a way to do it that is far more effective than others. But let's say you were going to just do a basic hit cardio session, normal cardio, you get on the bike and you'd go for 30 minutes, hit training, you would sprint for like 30 seconds, and then you would cruise for like a minute and a half or something like that. And then you you sprint for 30 seconds and you cruise for like, so the Tobadah style, you do the 20 seconds of maximal effort

and then the 10 second rest. It's these very short bursts of energy and then rest and then short, so it was like, that was a whole new thing that kind of took over for a bit. Well, we have to talk about why this guy big. What are the benefits of this? Why did it get big and why did everyone start using it? I mean, one time, right?

You could get an effective workout in. We've always been trying to solve. Time is as the prevention of what getting you started. Right, I was the big selling point. And to your point, Sal about NASM and 24 and so that. Remember, 24-Afinis came out with the express zone. That's right. And that was all revolved around this type of thing.

Right. It was a circuit based type of training, which is what that's with a similar. The idea is that you know, you can do, you're using the analogy of how you would use it on cardio, but it's also primarily used with with fitness, like with lifting weights. If you do a good, if you do it properly, absolutely. I even think the hit craze drove the curves franchise. Remember curves at the time, and it's not even popular now, but back then, it was a fastest growing health club company in the world. There were these small locations with these kind of pneumatic equipment that was set up

in a circle as women's only, and they modeled it after hit as well. The reason why I got so popular so fast was studies came out that showed that a short, high-intensity interval training session was at least equivalent in terms of calorie burn and fat burn to a much longer steady state cardio session. Now some studies even showed a little bit of a additional fat burning benefit. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, and they also showed that because of the explosiveness of it, you could actually get some a building muscle from it. Well, that's, and that's the thing I was just going to say.

So the study showed, oh, in a 15 minute hit session, you can burn as much body fat as you can in a 40 minute traditional cardio session or some studies showed, you might even burn a little bit more body fat. Then as the studies got longer and they tracked people for longer periods of time, they found that the fat burning effect actually grew over time when applied properly. That's one caveat, by the way, throughout this whole discussion, needs to be applied properly. But they found that there was even more of an additional or a better fat burning response

as participants continued to do this because it's an indirect fat burning effect because hit does not have nearly the muscle losing potential effect that regular steady state cardio does. And the reason for this is hit is much closer to resistance training than traditional steady state cardio is or steady state type exercises. It's much more similar. It's like sprinting versus long distance running. If you ever, this is a great visual. I've used this example for 20 years.

If you want to see what resistance training does versus just low intensity long duration type workouts to, look at the difference between a sprinter and a long distance runner. Both of their bodies have adapted to become just as good as they possibly can be at their respective sports. Sprinter, bigger muscles, shredded. Or the realizing more of that fast twitch response. Yes. And so there's two different muscle fiber types.

And so, you know, to be able to, you know, use that to your advantage, as far as like an athlete's concern, there's a lot of sports that it's not the, these are all short bursts. Like football was all short bursts, you know, basketball, I mean, maybe there's, there's definitely an endurance component to that, but like, as far as actual effort, there's maximal effort is, burst, it's short lived. And so this helped to kind of model around more of a applicable type of like a cardio type of format for an athlete. And now it also, and this is part a lot of people don't talk about, it also fed into the

very alluring mentality of the harder you train, the better. It fed right into that because hit training is intense. By nature, you're going close to all out. And so trainers loved it. Because they're like, yeah, I get to push my clients. Yeah, I get to push my clients. Gas them out.

So when you combine the fact that it studies show that it burned as much body fat with less time or potentially more body fat, especially over time, it caused people to lose muscle in the same way that steady state would, in some cases, maybe even built muscle in some individuals, although that effect is super minimal, and the fact that it's intense and trainers love it, there's no wonder that it exploded. Every trainer in every gym was like, oh, this is perfect, I can train my client for, far less, I could hammer the crap out of them,

which feeds my ego, and the study states more effective. And like anything in fitness, when it sweeps the whole industry, everything in fitness boils down to the individual, there are some detriment to doing it. It's definitely not for everybody. That's definitely for sure. There's not just some detriment.

I think there's several, and I think that it's a growing problem. Because of its popularity, and because of its widespread over the last decade plus, you gotta think of, here we are in January, right? We have an onslaught of new people that are beginners that are coming in the gym and you still have trainers that are promoting this message

or that are training clients this way. And if I were to, you know, generally speak about the people that should or should not be doing hit, a majority of beginners probably have no business in that way of training. No, and we should explain why. It's really the intensity factor. Now, it's not necessarily, although this plays a role,

but it's not necessarily that beginner shouldn't push themselves. There are cases when that's totally fine, but here's the problem. Here's why oftentimes I don't have beginners push themselves. The first thing to fly out the window when somebody, especially beginner,

is pushing their bodies to fatigue is technique and form. Okay, so if you're listening right now and you don't work out that often, go for a very slow jog and try and run properly. Now run as hard as you can, watch what happens. Your body's gonna move in ways that are not optimal. So one of the detriment of hit training is a much higher rate of potential injury.

I could take almost anybody and have them walk at a low to moderate intensity and I can pretty much guarantee that I can hurt themselves. I could also take a bunch of average people off the street tell them to sprint, even if it's for 10 seconds and guarantee you that a much higher rate of them, we're gonna hurt ourselves. Plus, yeah, the work isn't there, and guarantee you that a much higher rate of them are gonna hurt themselves.

Plus, yeah, the work isn't there yet. In terms of the joints in their health, and then now we're exaggerating the amount of forces that you have to account for by adding imply metric type exercises, by adding these exercises that are more have these shearing forces that you have to be able to stabilize. And if the prerequisite work isn't there,

it's gonna be damaging. Well, to your point, just about how this also, why it was a very appealing to a lot of people was that, it models a lot of the ways that athletes would train. And this is kind of my pet peeve with even a lot of the group training classes out there is, they've modeled some things after how we train athletes, but the irony is, you're not putting the prerequisites in of priming the body beforehand,

and then also the recovery stuff that you should be doing like an athlete does. Right, yeah. An athlete doesn't just talk about that. An athlete just can go out and just train hardcore like an athlete, and an athlete does things that... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, the meat of it, which is the exercise portion of it that is more marketable to everyone. It's more alluring. We idolize these athletes to begin with because we watch them on TV.

Their bodies look like they're impeccable shape. The performing these feats that we just are an awe of, we want to be like them. So what are they doing exercise-wise? Let's do that too. Yeah, and think about this. You're a gem and one of the big problems that you encounter, especially during the busy months of the year, is how do I cram more people in without having to add more equipment? And a great solution is to tell people to work out less, less, for less time

and harder. So when this got popular, all of a sudden, you saw Jim's being like, oh cool, no lines for cardio. 12 minute, 15 minute limit, high intensity interval training, or classes became shorter, or like you said, Justin, personal training sessions were shortened. And then the presentation was, hey, studies actually show, if we train really hard with intervals, dude, it's even evolved outside of the whole fitness sphere and the gym sphere, to where like you're talking

about biohackers now and you're talking about this whole community that's, it's a big source of people that are following these people's advice. And their whole thing is to be able to hack ways to get you success the quickest. And so you're seeing this now with Silicon Valley executives and people that don't have any fitness background to begin with, promoting these ideas because they want to get it in the most efficient time possible.

That's all it matters. Yeah, and hit training is a tool, like any other tool, if you use power properly, it's amazing, if it's used improperly, it's going to cause a disaster. I remember, I think it, who was it? Dave Aspery that was talking about how we worked out. 15 minute workout, right? 15 minute, it's like so all out my whole body and I don't need to do anything else because of it

and I'm sitting there like, oh gosh, it's so, nails and a chalk. Yeah, because if you apply it wrong, which, you know, the way he's promoting it, definitely is wrong. People can definitely hurt themselves. Here's the other thing, even if your form is right, technique is right, you're doing everything properly,

it's still not for everybody. There are definitely situations where high intensity just isn't good for people. If you're overstressed, not getting good sleep, nutrition is not good. Your hormones are at a whack or you're fighting an illness or you just have terrible recovery. Intensity could be a terrible thing. And in some cases, I've had clients where I said, you're not to work out hard at all because we're gonna sit you backwards.

Well, I remember two years ago when we wrote a hit program, I remember we sat down and it was something that we were very hesitant to do because we know that, we know that a lot of it's not for everybody. And so what we set out to do, that okay, if we're going to put something out there into the ether that is something that we're concerned that some people will abuse and I do,

we need to address what we think are the major problems with it. So that if somebody is gonna go through it, that they're at least covering those. And I'd like to talk in an organized manner those four that we had listed and starting off that they're at least covering those. And I'd like to talk and organize manner those four that we had listed and starting off with making sure that you're priming properly. Yes, I have yet to see,

I've seen some hit programs out there that include a warm up, but I have yet to see any hit program out there besides the one we created that actually has priming. Yeah. Now, what's the difference? What's the difference between a warm-up and priming? The number one, a warm-up is better than no warm-up, but warming up doesn't do nearly what priming can do in terms of setting the body up. At the very, very minimum, a priming or warm-up session should help prevent injury.

That's the very absolute minimum thing you should do, but there's so much more that it can do. It can encourage proper movement patterns. It can help prevent you from developing or strengthening muscle imbalances and movement pattern issues. And then as far as injury prevention is concerned, here's the deal. If I do a workout and Adam does a workout, and both of us do the exact same workout, there are different considerations for him and how he may hurt himself versus me and how I may hurt myself.

And priming sessions are much more specific. They train the body in ways to set the workout up so that you minimize your potential injuries. And it's just a whole different level. And hit training being as intense as it is, you should do a very good priming session beforehand to minimize injury and maximize the effects. Well, and back to, again, Justin's great point about this being so attractive to athletes and that type of training.

And the things that you don't see is, all these professional athletes that you may see on Instagram post videos of this explosive type training, what you don't see is the coach that they have that is spending time doing all their corrective boring work where they're laying on a foam rail or they're doing PNF stretching with them or they're getting their body properly primed

to go do the cool ship that makes Instagram, right? The videos of them doing something explosive over a box or doing something that's amazing jumping out of a pool, like all these cool things that go viral and that everybody loves to watch, but what they don't understand is that, you know, 90% of those athletes, unless they have a poor coach, and this does happen, you do see professional athletes.

Right, higher their friends that aren't great coach trainers. But for the most part, most of these guys are savvy, and girls are savvy enough to hire somebody who knows what they're doing. And what they're doing with them on those off days, or before they go into those workouts, is extremely important to those workouts being very effective, and then safe for them to like what you're saying.

Not to mention like the programmed active recovery days that you know, we'll go follow either in between or you know, throughout the week, that is programmed and that is planned on. And it's not just something that, you know, like afterwards I'm just gonna go get, you know, a massage, I'll lay on the foam roller to sort of band-aid whatever issues I had

from like hammering my body throughout the week doing hit workouts the entire week. Like they just get excessive with it because more is always better in this world. Now all workouts, all workouts, this is across the board. I don't care what kind of workout you do. All workouts are better when you move better. So that's number one, mobility is important for everything.

Number two, the more intense the workout is... More important to be good. The more important it becomes to reduce the risk of injury because the harder a workout is, the higher the potential. I'm not saying you're going to get hurt, I'm just saying the potential for risk of injury is my target. It's my target. Yes, because if I go, again, if I walk, my risk of injury is very low

versus if I take off in sprint, as hard as possible, same thing with your workout. So mobility and priming are important, no matter what, but they're extremely important. If you're going to do a hard advanced workout and forget the injury for a second. So I think I've made that case. I don't think anybody's gonna argue that,

but consider this, we've all done this. We've all had this happen to us where we've had those workouts, where we just, it takes us half the workout to get into the groove. It takes us half the workout to feel the movements properly. My shoulders a little stiff, my knees are a little off. This isn't feel right on my back. I can't lift as much, not because I'm not strong, but it just doesn't feel as solid.

I don't feel the movement isn't feeling like butter, right? And it takes you half the workout to get in. Priming takes care of that. How would you like to jump into your workout and the first set feels great. Everything feels phenomenal. That, do you think that's going to maximize your results and your progress? Absolutely. Do you think not doing that could potentially your results and your progress? Absolutely. Do you think not doing that could potentially take away from your progress?

Absolutely. Every workout has a potential for how effective it can be. And if we were to give it a number and say, like, let's say on a scale of 1 to 10, this workout, there's a potential for 10 or a potential for 1 for how effective it's going to be, priming ensures, proper priming, ensures that you're much closer to the 10 and not to the one. So it's extremely important,

high intensity of our training, absolutely requires proper priming. Yeah, and it also, even if you don't get injured, it's strengthens poor movement patterns period, right? Like one of the most common things, like we're sitting here having this conversation and I'm remembering back of being a fitness manager and seeing trainers do this and like, this is like nails on the chalkboard for me.

And I guarantee someone listening right now, if you're in a gym, you could probably even find somebody, this is happening right now because it's so common. You do an assessment with a client and I do a squat assessment, one of the most standard things that almost every trainer does with a client before you train them Common thing right I have this lady. She's you know 40 years old a little overweight. She wants to lose weight I'm a new trainer who was all pro hit and I love explosive training as it burns off the calories and it's hard for them I'm doing a squat assessment with her She squats down and her knees cave in you know common, feet flattened, knees cave in.

And then I get out on the floor and I decide to put jump boxes in her hip routine. Now, what you have to understand is if you ask a person to move and like a squat, a basement with no weight loaded on them whatsoever and they're slowly controlling them down and they have break down in that movement, meaning their knees, claps, or feet flat

and like I'm saying. And then you go ask them to go do something explosive that requires that same movement, squatting down and jumping up onto something. You're crazy to think that they're going to be able to mechanically address that while also trying to do something explosively for multiple repetitions.

And not only that, but not set up for success. And not only that, but you actually make that poor movement pattern stronger. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, you don't want to... Even if you don't get injury right away, you're just making something else really worse. You're just... You're continuing to strengthen that poor movement pattern groove, which at the very least will prevent that person or yourself from reaching your full potential at

the very least. What's more likely to happen is you're going to strengthen this poor recruitment pattern until a big injury hits you. Well, or even more so. And this is why like people think injury, like we say injury and you think acute, right? Like, oh, torn ACL or she's gonna end up chronic. Right, chronic pain. I mean, at the bare minimum, you're gonna get that from that. But if your knees are collapsing in all the time

when you squat down and then you go do jump boxes, you know, and her knees are folding in all the time. Like, I may not tear her MCL, you know, or I may not roll her ankle, but I guarantee she's gonna be feeling she's gonna be feeling she's gonna Eat shins on the box and fall or just get chronic near hip pain You know she's just gonna and but not know why you know I'm training with my trainer and I'm working out all the time. Why not why do I now feel like I have

Versitis in my hips or why is my my knee feel all inflamed all the time? You know and then the trainer foam rolls it and then goes right back into doing the same shit again. Your joints have a potential lifespan, right? They have a lifespan of use and abuse, right? That lifespan gets way higher when the joint is moving optimally. It gets way shorter when it's not.

So somebody with the poor recruitment pattern, they may start feeling knee pain, before they hit the age of 45. I got bad knees now. The knees move properly and the hips move properly. Ankle's moved properly, everything's done properly. And you're still working out and doing it again, appropriately and properly.

Now your joint lifespan is till the day you die. Now you're 90 and yeah, I don't have any joint pain. In fact, they're stronger than ever because I've moved them in proper ways and because high intensity interval training Intensities in that acronym because it's it's characterized by intensity It's extremely important to do proper priming. So that's why I'm happy you made that the first one Adam because a hundred percent Like if you're gonna do hit training, you got to do priming properly 100% the second thing that I think is a Big problem that I see with hit training and you know it made me remember it when you're saying jump boxes is

They're just either a they have no programming or be it's crappy programming. Yeah, now when I say programming You know if you don't know what that means. I mean, just the design of the workout. So as trainers and coaches, part of our job when we work with people is to design a workout. And workouts are not designed haphazardly. We don't just slap exercises together, nor do we just put exercises in there that target certain body parts.

There's a lot that goes into it. And a lot of hit programs, if not all of them, that I've ever seen, take programming and it means nothing. All the only thing that they consider, it's hard and how can I slap all these together in a workout. That's it.

Like, how can we do 30-second sprint and how can we do a minute of something easier, put something under that's hard, put something under that's easier, that's our programming and voila, we're done. And that is just crap. Which pretty much, I mean, the goal from we're done. And that is just crap. Which pretty much, I mean, the goal from what I've seen the most is just how can we get them to get to that fatigue state and then keep that going, uh, doing things in the fatigue state, which turns into a hot sloppy mess.

Right. And I'll tell you right now, 100% something that does not belong in high intensityintensity interval training as is traditionally done are explosive movements They just don't belong don't put them in in these type of workouts now why? Explosive movements are meant to be done explosively and not to fatigue at all now What is always included in everybody's hit program explosive movements? It's like the number I can almost always, I'm gonna see somebody doing jump boxes or jumping over a bench or a medicine ball or throwing something in the air or whatever.

And again, it's picked because it's hard. That's the worst possible thing you can do in a high intensity interval training state because you're just, you're doing cardio explosively, which is a terrible, terrible idea in terms of injury and just in terms of progress. And there's a small percentage of the population where that makes sense,

but you're talking about the one percenters. Oh yeah, very small. Yeah, you're talking about the extreme, extreme athlete that you are trying to challenge them in that way. So, but they normally have the mental, disciplining control, and then they know that going into it. It's like, hey, I am trying to push you to those limits of the body breaking down.

And your goal is to actually try and think about maintaining incredible form while also doing that. It's just a lot for the average person. Well, yeah, and to somewhat counter that just a little bit. In terms of like finding the composure, like if you have the ability and you have the skill set to be able to jump but then under control, like you kind of find where that balance is where I feel like, okay, now I'm under a state of fatigue and then this is the amount of rest that I need

in between. Like you have to be able to measure that personally to see, you know, where it gets away from you. No, no, that's the instruction aspect of it. Right. And it's never instructed that way. It's never coached like that. No, it's all a bunch of stuff strung together. So, and now, why is programming even important? Programming is the difference between a terrible and effective workout and one that is brilliantly effective. Literally, the same period of time, a 30 minute, poorly programmed workout

will not produce half the results of a well-programmed workout. Not only that, but the injury risk is through the roof with the poorly programmed workout and is far, far less with the well-programmed workout in terms of longevity of results. Poorly programmed workouts may produce short-term results, but terrible, typically, at long-term results. A well-programmed workout takes into account how your body progresses and how to get the body

to continue to respond and react and how to continue to progress, programming when it comes to workouts is everything. And unfortunately, hit training has very little of it. In fact, most people's hit training revolves around either a bunch of random exercises or a piece of cardio equipment. In my experience, the best hit training revolves around either a bunch of random exercises or a piece of cardio equipment. In my experience, the best hit training when done properly is done with certain resistance

training exercises being put together because you get more of that muscle building benefit, you get more of that fat burning benefit, that long term fat burning benefit, that hit can provide because of the muscle preserving muscle building effects. Right. that hit can provide because of the muscle preserving, muscle building effects. Right, and you mentioned something earlier, the, you know, to give examples of like smart programming is, you know, I'm not going to do something that's fatigue-based, like a sprint on a treadmill, and then go ask someone to do like a clean.

Yeah. To go do something fatiguing, and then to do something with, which is this is Justin's biggest bone that he has to pick with CrossFit and why it drives him so crazy is that a lot of the programming in there is like this where you have something fatigue based and then you ask someone to do something extremely complex. Complex if you were rested.

Complex for a matured. Super super high skill. Complex if you were athletic. Complex if you were somebody with good mechanics already. That's already, and then you throw in the fact that you're going to fatigue them. That's where this is a problem. So an example of good programming with it is like, if you're going to do something complex at all, it's the start of something. And then as, as you fatigue, the movements become easier, like a bicep curl or things that are that there's less risk with you being injured because we, we're taking an account that

you're fatigued after doing that. So you just did a sprint on a treadmill. I don't want you to do something complex like a squat or a deadlift. I want you to do something like a bicep curl or something that is less risky. Right. And because it's intense, you may be building some strength and endurance. That means you should also approach your hit training with some balance. So if I string together five different high intensity interval training exercises, but all of them focus on the wrong, let's say they all focus in one plane or I'm only doing pushing movements, I am neglecting another side of my body which can cause muscle imbalances.

So hit training, good program, hit training is quite balanced. Not just in body parts, not just that you're going to work chest and back and shoulders and legs and arms, but you're also looking at different movements. Are we strengthening the frontal plane? Are we strengthening the sagittal plane? Are we involving some twisting? All these movements to develop balance throughout this whole workout, not just about burning lots of calories. The next one is form. This is a big one for me. I feel like hit training among all forms of training.

Form is like the, it's on the bottom. Yeah, just don't look at it. Which is crazy to me. And this is what, again, what drives me the most crazy because it's almost like you've established through these other modalities how important form is. This is where like if form breaks down, you could get injured wherever.

But for some reason, it's just promoted out there that you just got to go as hard as you can, whatever, you know, you tell your body to do, you know, like you see people flopping on the ground, you see people, you see people rolling out of these positions, crazy stuff happening because they're trying so hard to squeeze out that last bit of maximal output. At this level, it's even more paramount to be able to regain composure, which is really, if you think of it more in terms of,, I'm gonna push my body to its limits, but now you have to think in contrast to that, how can I then regain composure the quickest?

That's what an athlete does. If I was just like to pour my entire energy out there on the field, like every single play and then just like melt into nothing, like I would be worthless. Yeah, how many times have you guys seen trainers run hit classes and they do the different exercises and the demonstration is like,

and over here you do this, over here you do this, go, do as many as you can, form out the window. Nobody focuses on form. Right, right. This is also why we tend to recommend the rest and the interval part different, right? Because there's such an individual variance on what recovery time looks like for everybody.

Like, I don't have great cardiovascular endurance right now. If you were to put me next to somebody who is in great athletic shape and cardio shape, our rest periods in a hit interval training, it's gonna be completely different. I'm gonna need to wait probably a good 30 seconds longer to allow myself to fully recover before I go out explosive again. And that's why I have a problem with programming that we'll show in this kind of goes in both form and programming, a problem with programs

that give you just times. Let's say one minute, you do this, 30 seconds, you do this, one minute, well okay this, 30 seconds, you do this, one minute, well, okay, I could take one client through a minute of intense training and it barely even faces them and they only need 15 to 30 seconds rest before they do it again. Then I could take somebody else and that is completely different response. Oh, really? The same thing I noticed even like if we bring up something like a tabata or you know

what other methods are out there in terms of like, here's the time signature, here's the rest period, and it's like standardized. Like, unfortunately, that does not work. You know, like, if you're bringing anybody is going to have a different type of recovery rate in front of me. And so to be able to then program that, you have to have some flexibility there and allow the individual to then assess, like, do I feel like I'm ready to then regain what I was doing previous to that

and maintain that form? This is an area of our business too that I always would struggle with because when you do something that's to the masses, we always get feedback that because people want precise things. Am I supposed to rest for 30 seconds? It doesn't say formula. Yeah, and it's unfortunate because, you know, yeah, for, you know, making it easier for

us and business reasons to be nicer just to say, well, and then you know that's why everybody does it. One minute here, 15 seconds there, and we just give the direct answer. But the reality is, we all know from all the people we've trained that that greatly varies in a better way to do it is to explain to somebody that when you rest, you want that heart rate to come all the way back down before you go back at it again. Otherwise, you are, you're just fatiguing yourself,

and if you go right back into the interval, you can guarantee that the form and everything's gonna be down because you didn't allow yourself to fully recover. You actually lose the benefits of hit training. If you don't allow your body to in the recovery period of the, at the interval, remember, it's interval, right? So it's high intensity interval training. If you don't let your heart rate come down

in that interval period, then really all you're doing is high intensity cardio and you're not getting the benefits of the rest of the intensity. You're going to adapt, right? And so you have to look at it as, you know, your recovery rate might be a little bit longer initially, but this is training. So if you're training properly and you're allowing your heart rate to fully recover, you know, you apply this again the next week, you'll be surprised at how, you know,

all of a sudden now you recover your rate, you can, you can get back at it because you feel like you've regained composure. Right, because again, if you don't have those intervals in there, now all you're doing is a higher, you know, intensity version of cardio. The cardio. And now, now what's wrong with that?

Well, we talked about the benefits at the beginning of the episode of high-intensity interval training. So if you want to reap those benefits, you got to do it the right way, not doing it the right way by not allowing your heart rate to come back down, well, now you just, you might as well do something else. You're losing the potential benefits. Again, you're not using the tool in the most effective way that the tool can be used.

So it's really important to us, for example, when we wrote Maps hit, that's how we designed it. Like we gotta, there's a little bit of a feeling out and we know because from one person to the next, that number could be quite different. We also wrote it to where there's actually levels to where you scale up. So that's right.

Knowing that okay, you know, here's something that's a little more general for most people and then if you were more advanced, it can be longer. We know that. Because there should be, you could add a little more volume, we could shorten the amount of time for recovery. There's waste to manipulate it,

so it challenges you more, but make sure that that's the level you are. Now, the next thing which I think is a problem with most workouts is they don't prioritize recovery at all. At most, the way most programs will reprioritize recovery, as they'll just tell you, this is your day off or here's your two days off, these are your recovery days. Now, we know as trainers, who've been, again,

working with people for decades, that there are more effective ways of recovering. Now, not doing anything and just resting, yes, that's considered a recovery day, but active recovery is far better, working on mobility in between those hard workouts and including those types of things. Your body recovers much better. Not only that, but as far as prioritizing recovery is concerned, with hit training, you need more recovery than you would with traditional forms of cardiovascular

type training. You know, you could do steady state cardio on a daily basis, but you can't do high-intensity interval training that way. In fact, it's not a good idea. Yeah, the demand is much higher on the joints, and so let's consider the health of the joints. So we gotta keep that low-intensity, moderate type movement there, in order to keep the health and maintain the functionality, you know, of the joints because you are going to notice, you know, placing that kind of

demand and that kind of pressure there, you know, you will feel the aches, the pains, it'll all start to creep up real fast. Well, again, we're training like an athlete. We should be recovering like an athlete too. You see anytime you see LeBron James or anybody post which it's popular now they share their recovery protocol. Oh my god. I'm majority of the money that they spend on their recovery. Yeah, they actually did an article. Maybe Doug could pull that up and be interested to hear what that the number was, but I think you can look up how much did LeBron James spend

and recovery tools and over the over 2019 or with that see if they have that up there is like over a million It's yeah, it's a time. Yeah, a ton of money is invested in now Obviously, that's an extreme analogy is you're you're not an MBA professional player But if you're going to be training in modalities that are similar to professional athletes with this explode Which explosive training is like an athlete you'd better damn well be taking care of least somewhat addressing this appable type of recovery for that type of training. And you know, this was of all the things that we did

in the hit program, I was most proud of and excited about the flow sessions that we did in the flow days that we recut, that we included because of that. Yeah, I was really sorry. It's been over a million dollars. Is it, is it? 1.5 million, 1.5? On recovery. that we do in the flow days that we're included because of that. Yeah, it's been over a million dollars. 1.5 million. On recovery. But think about that's an investment for him.

That's a solid investment because his body is obviously that's what's making him. The money, let's preserve it. Let's preserve the high level of performance output that he has. In order to do that, you have to make sure that you're revisiting and making sure all the joints are working properly. To put it, give you an analogy,

it'd be like building a car that goes really fast and you have no steering wheel, no brakes. That's, you're not gonna do very well in a car like that, right? So spending all your time and energy on how hard your workout is and spending no time and energy on any type of structured recovery. Again, you have structured workouts.

Your recovery should be structured as well. Active recovery makes a huge difference. I remember when I put this together probably over 10 years ago with myself and with my clients, what I used to do when I'd work out after hard workouts is I'd go and do nothing and think, okay, I'm gonna sit here and let my body recover. And I'll never forget, at one point, I got into cycling a little bit, just some mountain biking. And I remember after my heavy leg workouts,

I get really sore. And usually what I would do is I would just sit up with my legs kicked up and think, let me recover. But I remember I had this mountain bike and I was kinda getting into it a little bit. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna go, and I'm just gonna go easy, I'm gonna go mountain bike right, right around or whatever.

And I remember coming back and being like, wow, my legs feel way less sore. I wonder how they're gonna feel tomorrow. I wonder if I'm gonna get even more. The following day I just felt so much better. And then my gains started going up in the gym because of the active recovery. I noticed those clients as well.

I'm glad you brought that up because I remember why I didn't do it either. And because I, why I didn't do it either and because I the recovery piece I always thought of just you know injury prevention and when you're young you think you're invincible So that's I'm not worried about that. I feel good Yeah, and like you Sal was go as hard as I can than rest go hard as I can and rest What I wish I understood back then that I know now is how much it actually accelerates your results. And I think if more people understood that,

that listen, I know this day where we're telling you to do mobility drills and you're not like pouring sweat and you're not super sore afterwards of it. But if you, if I could tell you that that's going to put your results into hyperdrive, you would probably do it more, you would probably be more apt to do it where most people avoid it because they're like, I'm young, I'm healthy, I don't have any injuries, I'll be okay. Instead of healing and repairing damage, now you're adapting.

It's a completely different type of an experience. And yeah, these flow sessions were great because it's all the best mobility moves you could think of. And then, you know, on some of the days, it's strung together. So it's in a way, they sort of interweave together. So it's like, it's own workout in a sense to, you know, make it more interesting. And I don't know, I had a lot of fun with that.

Yeah, I'm glad you said adaptation. Remember the goal of any workout, or one of the main goals of any workout is to get your body to change for the better, right? We want to get the body to either get stronger or build more endurance or burn body fat or of course even change our appearance for the positive. Now, all of course even change our appearance for the positive.

Now, all of those happen because the body is adapting to the stimulus, or another word for the stimulus, would be stress. So high intensity interval training, just like other forms of exercise, is a stress on the body. And it sends a signal to the body. Now, the body has to repair and recover first,

but we also want it to adapt. It's not just about repairing the damage, it's also about preparing for further damage later on the way the body prepares for further damage is by increasing its capacity. So then what happens is the same stress does not produce the same damage. And of course this is why you end up working out harder

or faster or you add weight because now your body can handle more. And this is how you keep continuing to move the dial. What got your body to adapt and progress today? Now you got to go a little harder next time to continue to do that. But if you don't prioritize recovery properly, what ends up happening, a lot of people get trapped in this, is they just recover. Nothing necessarily wrong with recovering,

but if you want to progress, you got to go beyond recovery. There's not just enough to get sore, soreness go away, go back and work out, and I'm exactly the same space as I was last week, and then the next week I'm exactly the same space. I recover every time, but I don't adapt. I don't progress.

With prioritizing recovery, doing it properly, it gets your body to... It helps the adaptation process happen. Because remember, you sent the signal. Now let's set the stage for that signal to allow, or at least to, promote adaptation to happen. So, like with our... When we create a maps hit, it's like, you have your hit workouts, but then you have your flow sessions in between, which helps promote adaptation, maximizes your progress and results. So the question I have for you then

is do the risk outweigh the benefits? I think the benefits outweigh the risks, but there's a few caveats here. There's a little bit of fine print here. Is it appropriate for you? So if you're a high-stress individual, not getting good sleep, if you have terrible mechanics, you're a total beginner, probably not a good idea for you.

If you've always done this, as you go to, probably not a good idea for you. So it's, A, it's gotta be the right person. B, it has to be a good program. All hit programs are not created equal. You do a bad one, the risks are way higher than the benefits. If it's a good one, now the benefits are outweigh the risks.

And then the other thing is, if, look at your goals. If your goal is fat loss, which most people's goals are fat loss, especially people who do hit training, your nutrition probably has to be pretty good. It's pretty damn hard to erase a bad diet with a hard workout. No matter what workout you do, I'll tell you something right now,

burning calories is really hard work. Eating calories is a lot of fun and pretty damn easy. So, you know, those three, I would say, those are just a fine print, right? Consider those three things, and then hit training is probably a good idea. Yeah, this is like nitrous. I mean, this is definitely a tool that works, and I think that it has a very like small window,

and I think that like the misconception out there is that this is a method that you're gonna continue to keep hammering your body with, and I just, I have to put that out there because I love it personally because I come from that athletic background. I come from the world of really loving to just push my body to the limits.

But now that I've had more wisdom in the way I train and all this, I still go to it, but for a shorter window. It's the only program that we have a warning. That's true. It's the only one that we recommend to people that you get out of it, right? Most other, I've been asked many times before, someone ran M.A.P. Santa Balak, they just ran a study, they loved it, they had phenomenal results. They said, Hey, Adam, I loved it so much and I feel like I can improve more.

Can I run it right back again? Absolutely. It's totally fine to do that. Hit is one of the ones that we don't recommend people do that. We've in and out of that modality, of that way of training. And it is. It's because of the risk factor. And then also the ability of the body's ability to adapt to that way of training.

You don't want, you start the results, start to diminish after you've been doing that for a while. So all the studies that support how beneficial it is for burning fat, that you got to understand that the longer you've been doing that way of training, the smaller that number gets. Right. And here's the bottom line. Nothing burns body fat as much body fat in a short period of time as hit training. Nothing. at any short period of time as a hit training. Nothing, it's by far, if we were to compare

maps hit to any other maps program in a four or five week period of time, it's gonna burn the most body fat. It's just the most effective. Probably why maps hits one of the top selling programs and also because of the allure of it, right? Short period of time, burn maximum body fat, but again, you have to be the right person for it.

Don't do it wrong, but yeah, it's, there's nothing that'll burn body fat faster in that short period of time. But when you're done with it, just like Adam says, don't do it again and think you're gonna repeat those same effects every five weeks, by or every six weeks, by doing the program all over.

It doesn't work that way. Once you do it, then you move into a more traditional workout. And after another couple months or so, then you can go and inject yourself back into the level. And then once you're in advanced lift, you've utilized it, you understand the principles behind it. I don't know how you guys, this is how I use hit training today.

I don't run our hit program straight for four to six weeks straight. What I do is I intermittently add those types of workouts when it makes sense for me. When I'm on the go. I only have 30 minutes. I only have 30 minutes. Wow, I haven't done a hit style of training in months. This will be it, and I only have 30 minutes of workout today. I'm gonna pull from that tool belt.

I'm gonna use that tool today, get great benefits, and then I'm gonna move back into my traditional training. So that's how I coach people to use it. Once you understand the principles you've gone through a program like that before, then that's how I think a veteran should use a tool like this, is you intermittently interject it into your training program. Totally agree. Now Maps hit, of course, that's the program that we created around the principles of interval training, but, you know,

priming and recovery's included. It's excellent programming, exercise demos are in the program, so it's complete. So if you got the program, you got everything laid out in front of you. It's 50% off all month long. We're doing this for the month of January because we know a lot of people, the number one goal is fat loss. People are motivated by faster results. You guys asked for it, so we're trying to deliver.

It's 50% off. Here's how you get you just count. Go to mapshit.com, that's MAPS, h-i-i-t.com, and use the code hit50 for the discount. That's h-i-i-t50, no space. Again, that's for the discount. Hit it. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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