If a customer does 10 seconds of actual anaerobic work, may be needed 150 seconds of rest to recover the ATP they spent.
Compare it with a 30 seconds hard aerobic track, where rest can be 30 seconds. Same working time, totally different system.
Once trainers see this difference in rest, it is much easier to sense when a client is truly in anaerobic territory and when the session has just turned into hard aerobic work or random discomfort.
What counts as true anaerobic training?
OPEX calls anaerobic sessions “pain” or “unsustainable” for a reason. They are powerful, very stressful and cannot be repeated many times in a row without much rest.
In practice, true anaerobic work looks like:
Short to medium duration effort (often 10 to 60 seconds, sometimes up to 2 minutes)
Very high power output relative to the athlete’s ability
Long rest periods, about 10 to 20 times a working time
A definite drop in ability if rest is interrupted
An important point in the lecture was this: a lot of research that talks about “high-intensity training” actually describes hard aerobic worknot anaerobic work.
The classic example is the Tabata protocol: 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, for 8 rounds or more.
It’s absolutely high-intensity, but it’s not high-intensity anaerobic in the way that OPEX defines it. The rest is too short for the athlete to reproduce true anaerobic power throughout the rounds.
What happens instead:
Early rounds may be anaerobic in intent
The body cannot rebuild ATP fast enough
The system shifts to more aerobic support to keep you alive
The output drops and turns into a “just survive” session.
You are no longer training the anaerobic system in a targeted manner. You are simply teaching the body to suffer from fatigue.
The version of OPEX for a real anaerobic interval looks more like:
10 seconds all out on Assault Bike, then 150 seconds rest.
Simple, ugly and very effective when used on the right person at the right time.
Because aerobics and strength should come first
On the EST side, OPEX uses the Continuation of MAP for the development of aerobic evolution in about a year. On the anaerobic side, they talk about a separate continuum for “pain”.
These two consecutively sit next to each other, not on top of each other. One does not automatically convert to the other, but a strong aerobic base is treated as a prerequisite before the client gains anaerobic work.
Two big boxes to check before the customer touches Anaerobic Training:
The light bulb analogy explains this well. If a light bulb can get very bright, it has the ability to generate a lot of internal power. This is like a powerful client with good engineers. This individual can now express substantial anaerobic work.
If someone is weak, new to resistance training, and moves poorly, they don’t produce enough force to hit the anaerobic system. They don’t do pain sessions. They are just sweaty and tired.
That’s why OPEX binds resistance training quality in anaerobic training. You don’t need to be strong to cycle easily for 30 minutes, but you definitely need strength and agility to sprint hard and recover from it.
Simple, Not Fancy: How OPEX Creates Anaerobic Advances
In Thursday’s workshops, coaches split into teams and constructed simple anaerobic progressions, all cyclical, over eight weeks.
Some key ideas emerged from this work:
Simple recipes are more difficultit doesn’t get any easier when done right
Mixed mode complex tracks hide the true contraction rate
“Sexuality” is in the execution, not the spreadsheet
A messy session might look like: 10 quick burpees, then a sprint bike, then jump rope, then repeat. It’s tough, but the turnover is inconsistent and the stimulus is blurry.
A pure anaerobic session is more like: 1 hard machine, 1 pure work period, 1 long rest period, repeat for a small number of sets.
Coaches would often look at their 8-week plans and say, “Is that it? It looks pretty basic.”
The answer was yes, it was must they look basic. The hard part is:
Hitting the right power at every interval
He gets enough rest
Making efforts repeatableunsustainable
If the client goes one minute hard and then rests, they have to go back and match that effort to the sets. This is what trains the anaerobic system, not a complicated list of movements.
Why anaerobic training is so messy in groups
Office hours posed a big practical question:
What happens if you try to perform an anaerobic progression in a group gym?
The short answer from OPEX: it turns into a mess.
Picture of 20 people doing a “pain” piece like push-ups and pull-ups:
5 younger members do ring rows and goblet squats, rest often. They are basically doing cluster type strength work, not true anaerobic intervals.
12 or so mid laners grind with empty rods and single pulls. Turnover is slow, fatigue sets in, and the track never reaches true anaerobic power.
3 advanced members are unbroken and actually receive the prescribed dose.
The same happens in a simple cycling protocol if the group has a large spread of fitness. Some people will default to hard aerobic work because they simply cannot produce enough power long enough to tap into the anaerobic pathways.
With anaerobic training, dose response is everything. Hunter:
If only a small fraction of the room is actually getting that dose, then programmatically, you’re not doing what you say you’re doing.
This is why OPEX tends to keep anaerobic advances for:
Groups in the general population usually do much better with smart strength work and progressive aerobic training.
When anaerobic work really makes sense
During the lecture, three main “utility buckets” for OPEX Pain were laid out.
1. Athletic specificity
This is the clearest and strongest reason to use anaerobic training. Examples include:
Short to middle distance track and field athletes doing true sprint intervals
Field athletes such as soccer players who do 10- to 20-second high-intensity bouts with plenty of rest
Competitive CrossFit athletes who need serious lactate buffering to survive event formats
In these cases the sport requirements that the athlete handles these strenuous, unsustainable efforts.
2. Metabolic stress and body composition
Some trainers see anaerobic work as a way to boost fat loss, as the sessions are too taxing. The problem is the cost.
Anaerobic training is expensive in every way:
It takes high motivation and intention
It hits the nervous system hard
It needs a lot of restoration
You can get a strong metabolic response with much lower cost tools like hard but controlled aerobic intervals. So while you could use anaerobic work here, usually a bad choice.
3. Boosting aerobic capacity with a “lactic acid booster”
This landed with many coaches.
Think serious endurance runner, not Sunday jogger. They are racing a 10k and want to better handle the surges and hills after the race is over.
At 6 km a hill appears:
If they have trained in some anaerobic “booster” work, they can handle the spike in lactate and continue.
They could choose to retreat and avoid attempting the hill.
Or they could attack it and then get stuck because their system can’t clear and reuse the lactate.
In this case, small doses of anaerobic training support the aerobic system at times when the race temporarily jumps above steady pace.
Meet Assistant Instructor Steve Volke
Week 5 also featured one of the assistant trainers, Steve Volkeowner of OPEX Regina.
Steve and the head trainer have been side by side since the early days of OPEX Gym. He opened his gym that same year and was a coach for a long time.
Some reasons to be on the trainer team:
He is one general in the way he runs his business and his training.
He is thoughtful in how he builds relationships, programs and systems.
He has a powerlifting background and understands strength on a deep level.
Consistently runs one of the most OPEX profitable gyms.
Steve has also mentored OPEX gym owners and CCP coaches for years and now supports the Method cohort in workshops, office hours and Slack, along with the other assistant trainers.
What’s Next: Writing Complete Training Programs
Week 6 of the OPEX method shifts from individual pieces to the full picture: writing educational programs.
Coaches move from:
Long term cycles, long term planning
In mesocycles, shorter phases
Planning a daily schedule
The aim is to combine resistance training, aerobic work and, where appropriate, anaerobic work using clear principles of parallel training.
But the big issue remains the same. Keep it simple and transfer it to the customer’s real life. Fancy exercise choice is not the point. Moving people forward with clear intent is.
The program also continues to highlight the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is an understanding of ATP, resting ratios and MAP models. Wisdom is taking that information and using it to help a client in a way that fits their goals, abilities and lifestyle.
If you want to delve deeper into this kind of thinking, you can learn more about OPEX Method Training and Coaching.
You can also watch strength coach and DPT Dr. David Skolnick to document his experience from week 5 in his vlog on the OPEX YouTube channel.
Key takeaways from Week 5: Pain with a Purpose
Anaerobic training looks cool on paper, but it is expensive and only useful for the right person, at the right time, with the right dose.
For most general population clients, a smart combination of strength and aerobic work will cover almost any goal they’re interested in. For advanced and athletically oriented clients, targeted anaerobic progressions can be a powerful tool as long as the coach respects the cost.
If you’re a coach, take a moment to ask: who on your roster has really earned this kind of job, and who needs to stay focused on the basics.
If you want more structure, support, and a clear model to follow, consider joining a future cohort of the OPEX method and turn knowledge into real coaching wisdom.
