The 4 pillars to successful long VO2 max intervals

Sally is a running newbie who has entered her first marathon. She’s incredibly excited about the challenge but she’s scared that she won’t be able to complete the race. Sally has recently read that by training more, she can raise her VO2 max (amount of oxygen that your body can utilise [1] ), giving her a better chance of finishing her first marathon. Sally, however, is a full-time accountant, with a busy social life, and thus finding the time to train is a real challenge.  Sally needs to maximise her bang for buck in time spent training. But how?

 

Maximise your bang for buck in time spent training with VO2 max High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

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I get it, you’ve got a busy life, with many work and social commitments. Running requires a significant amount of your energy and time, so how are you going to fit it all in? Well I’ve got some GREAT news for you. HIIT provides you with an incredible bang for your buck in time spent training and should be incorporated into your running plan. But why? By performing high intensity running intermittently, not continuously, you can maintain a faster running pace for longer with less accumulated strain and fatigue whilst reaping the benefits of specific adaptations [2]. When performed correctly with adequate recovery, HIIT can provide you with rapid improvements to your race times [2]. It’s important to remember, however, that this is not about ‘NO PAIN, NO GAIN’, you should always leave your HIIT session with the knowledge that you had one more interval in you. This is a training session, not a race. Leave some energy in the tank for your next run. HIIT is a powerful but often misused tool. It’s time to take it to the next level.

 

Rest periods between each interval are an essential part of the workout —  put on your sprinters cap.

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What might not spring to mind when you think about HIIT? Rest. Without sufficient rest, it’s physiologically impossible for you to repeat a running pace that will place you in your limits of physiological tolerance. i.e. your ‘severe’ intensity domain. Instead, with insufficient rest between intervals, your running pace will get sucked into the ‘heavy’ intensity (threshold) domain as this exercise domain is more sustainable. In short, this will result in your session outcome being entirely different to its desired intention. The net effect? Ineffective training that wastes your time, and time is precious.

 

The question then 'how long should your recovery periods be between intervals?'. A challenging question to answer in view of the polarising aims of a recovery period. A successful recovery period between intervals should 1) Maximise your ability to run hard during subsequent intervals, but also 2) allow you to easily accumulate minutes at >90% VO2 max in your subsequent intervals. How then can you strike the perfect balance?

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The good news is that traditional long VO2 max HIIT sessions don't require a specific work to rest ratio like a tabata session for example. It appears that 2 minutes is the magic number here, having been previously shown to allow runners to reach a higher peak VO2 (mL/kg/min) compared to 1 minute of passive (walking) recovery (increase by 1.7%) and 4 minutes of passive (walking) recovery  (increase by 1.9%). The percentages increases might not significant, but when placed into context, this is an easy win that will allow you to collect more minutes in the severe intensity domain (red zone) that you can apply to your VO2 HIIT session tomorrow [3]. 

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