Live from the NSCA Euro Con, Day 2

…I was wrong. Well, somewhat wrong. Paul Comfort and I are on still the same page regarding maximal strength, but his talk centred around jumps and how to use (and not use) concentric, slow and fast SSC testing to determine which distribution of speed and strength training will be most beneficial to an individual athlete. Most beneficial in terms of increasing relative impulse (force x time), which is what determines athletic speed and in-game success. In other words words, how quickly they can execute a movement, such as jumping to (and high enough to) reach a ball, or moving forward on the field. His lab is has been producing great research for years.  He is a logical, big-picture guy who understands sports, what is meaningful to performance in those sports, and how to accurately and reliably test those things. We had a great chat afterwards, and I look forward to learning from what he does next.

Giudo van Ryssemgem reemphasized what strength and conditioning experts know: heavy resistance training is the foundation of improving athletic performance as it is the prerequisite to improving impulse, or athletic speed. His presentation focused on ways to train with heavier loads by altering the athletes sensation of how heavy those loads are. This increase in stimulus should result in greater positive adaptations. It is really interesting stuff that I am eager to experiment with.

He continued on the theme from day 1 of eschewing gimmicky equipment and training methodologies in favour of training with challenging loads.  “Many reps is fitness.” he said “Then it becomes cardiovascular training and it decreases performance.” I, and the scientific literature couldn’t agree more!  

Which leads to the next topic: sHIIT Science.

On the surface, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) looks good and sounds better.  Participants work hard doing athletic-looking movements with —or without— resistance, then take a brief pause and to it or something else again. It is sweaty, exhausting, and usually over in about 30 minutes.  Unfortunately that is a terrible waste of time and energy. It is likely making the players weaker and will definitely make them slower. Anyone who advocates HIIT for team sports either has only the most superficial understanding of exercise science, or has not grasped how that sport is played and won. 

We’ve been here before: speed is the single most important determinant of success in team, combat and racquet sports.¹  This is consistently demonstrated in well-designed studies comparing starters to reserves, seniors to juniors, major league to minor league, medalists to non-medalist, all-stars to other players.2  This holds true for men, women, boys and girls, and it makes sense:  Players and their teammates with faster cognitive speed recognize opportunities and select the right response (pass/shoot/dribble) more quickly.  They use athletic speed to get to an open space more rapidly than an opponent. They demonstrate technical speed by getting their pass or shot or punch on target sooner.³

Defensively, cognitive speed is recognizing what the opposition is trying to do, athletic speed is moving to take away that option, and technical speed is intercepting/stealing/blocking.  Speed determines who scores more.⁴ Whoever scores the most wins.

Team, combat, and racquet sports are more than one play.  There are many scoring opportunities in a game. Opportunities at the end of the contest are no less important than those at the start.  Therefore players need some sort of resiliency/endurance/persistence/conditioning to be able to perform for an hour or two or three or four (tennis).  HIIT is not the way to increase this capacity, despite what its advocates say. It is almost guaranteed to make you loose every scoring opportunity. It improves VO2max, increases mitochondrial density, and makes athletes slower.  In diminishes repeated sprint ability. It decreases their maximum force generating capabilities. It makes them slower. It lowers their ability to generate power. It makes them slower. It teaches them to pace themselves. It makes them slower.

HIIT isn’t all bad.  It started with a fellow named Marty Gibala⁵ at McMaster University. He found that in untrained individuals, the obese, type 2 diabetics, and cardiac rehab populations, HIIT on a bike ergometer was more effective at improving health markers and was more enjoyable than long continuous exercise. This is likely because, by design, they spend more time at and above 80% of their VO2max with HIIT. 

As a reference, team- combat- and racquet-sports (yes, even  Soccer) are typically played with an average between 50 and 70% VO2max, with very brief —usually game defining— bursts well above 100%. So brief that measuring the VO2 required to kick a ball, swing a bat or tackle an opponet is irrelevant.  What matters is if they do it fast, hard, far and accurate enough.

High relative VO2 is where HIIT gets its name, as the intensity of other other parameters (speed, power, strength, RFD, impulse, resistance load…) is low to moderate i.e. below threshold to stimulate improvements in those parameters.  High aerobic intensity interval training, or HAIIT, would have been a more accurate name, however it certainly would not sound as appealing since it is pronounced “hate”.

Results of subsequent research on athletes is mixed, only if you consider all athletes as a single homogenous group. When you stratify athletes based on sport and training history the results are consistent and clear: Team, combat and racquet sport athletes do worse with HIIT than more traditional periodized strength and speed training protocols. Often HIIT is worse than no training at all. In pure endurance athletes, replacing 1-2 endurance training sessions with HIIT (sprint or resistance exercise circuit) sessions increases their VO2max and often their race performance.  In team, combat, and racquet sports, players with a lack of training experience in strength, power and speed, tend to do okay with HIIT, but do better with heavy strength training. Though they may be practicing and playing their sport at a high level and are aerobically trained, they have are effectively untrained from a resistance and speed training perspective. In the untrained, anything improves everything a bit. In every study showing a performance  benefit from HIIT in athletes, it was only an improvement over no or aerobic-only training.

Speed, strength and power adapt in response to training at and around maximal speed, strength and power.⁶ This is impossible with HIIT protocols. Why? Because even in world champions, maximum speed, strength or power output can only be maintained for about 10 seconds, and takes 10-50 times longer to fully recover, just like the work:rest ratios in those sports. If the work intervals are longer, or rest intervals shorter, it is impossible to be training at high (speed, strength or power) intensity.  Consequently, the athletes does the interval at half-speed and/or half-ROM and/or reduced effort and/or against very light resistance. The intensity is too low to stimulate positive adaptations. They learn to pace themselves, in order to survive the HIIT session, and adapt by inhibiting their maximal neural drive. Their hormonal system is stimulated to increase mitochondria and decrease contractile proteins.⁷ They get slower.

Over time, their repeated sprint ability, speed, power and strength capacity diminishes. Sure they may be able to run after one more ball in triple overtime, but they will never get to triple overtime because they will loose every sprint during regulation play. They got slower and weaker through HIIT. So don’t do HIIT. 

Unless you want to loose to my teams.  

—CG