I mentioned earlier that I follow Dr. Peter Attia. The part of the protocol that I liked the least is the 4×4 intervals for maximum aerobic intensity, because they lead to soreness the next day.
I recently read The Quick and The Dead by Pavel Tsatsouline, which offers an interesting alternative. It’s in some exercise science to explain the reasoning, which I’ll go into below for those interested. The gist is that you do about 20 second sprints of the activity of your choice with very easy recovery time in between (over 5 minutes). I’ve tried this and the sprints are challenging and feel great. And very little pain afterwards. For cycling, I just cruise at a fast aerobic pace. Then I do a 20 second sprint as hard as I can, followed by a but over 5 minutes of fast sailing. I repeat this sprint/cruise 10 times and finish with a cooldown. For my upper body, I do my normal strength training with resistance bands. Then I do alternating sprint/cruise arm cycling. I also alternate sprint/cruise in my kayak simulator with weight belts. So far I’ve done up to 5 reps with the arm cycling and 4 with the kayak simulator. I will report in a few weeks how this works full time.
I have found Pavel’s writing fascinating for some time. He is most famous for introducing Westerners to the kettlebell, but he has also brought a lot of lost exercise science knowledge from the former Soviet Union. So far I haven’t followed any of his advice to the letter, so I’ll be interested to see how this works out. I have to admit that I still don’t exactly follow the advice in the book, because the book suggests specific exercises like kettlebell swings, but I have adapted it to cycling and arm.
Exercise science behind sprints with Greater Recovery
The point of high intensity exercise like 4×4 intervals or Pavel’s sprint/full recovery approach is to fully develop the aerobic capacity of our fast twitch muscles. Those muscles kick in two types, fast oxidizing and fast glycolytic. The former can be trained to develop their mitochondrial capacity and thus improve their aerobic capacity. This is good for both performance and health. The conventional wisdom is to do this by exercising for a significant amount of time at high intensity, such as 4×4 intervals. Everything so far is exercise science 101. But Pavel presents an alternative mechanism I’d never heard of that is triggered by sprinting: The typical way our muscles are supplied with energy to do aerobic work is by breaking molecule of adenine-tri-molecule -phosphate (ATP) to adenine diphosphate. But it turns out that if you hold a sprint long enough (like more than about 10 seconds but not more than about 20), there is an “emergency mechanism” that can be used: adenine diphosphate can be broken down into adenine monophosphate, yielding more energy. The problem is that it takes a while to recover from this, which is why recovery periods between sprints of more than five minutes are needed. But that trade-off is more than worth it in nature: a leopard sprinting to catch an antelope doesn’t mind if it has to slow down for a while afterwards. An antelope that has just escaped from a leopard does not mind hiding and resting for a while. This is where the title of the book “The Quick and The Dead” comes from.
Here’s the cool part from a health perspective: I’ve heard it AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) molecule that has been reported in several places as a potent stimulus for improving mitochondrial status in muscle. But I didn’t realize until now that the “AMP” in AMPK is exactly adenine monophosphate. What the body senses is relatively low ATP levels compared to AMP levels. This is what happens to the muscles when you do the repeated 20-second sprint bouts, and that’s why this is a powerful alternative mechanism to high-intensity interval training. And as I mentioned, it is advertised to lead to less pain, which I found to be true for me.
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I am a Mechanical Engineer born in 1953, Ph. D, Stanford, 1980. I have been in the CAE engineering field for decades. I also have a lifelong interest in outdoor activities and fitness. I have had both hips replaced and a heart valve replaced due to a genetic condition. This blog chronicles my adventures in staying active despite these bumps in the road.
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