High Intensity Training

March 26, 2012

Sprung

With the clocks springing forward yesterday, it was back to peering into the coffee pot to see the water level after a dark 6am start this morning. But the last time it was this dark was the 1st March, so it’s taken less than four weeks to gain an hour of morning light. With longer days on the menu it’s difficult to feel anything other than excellent!

With the onset of beautiful weather we spent most of the weekend working in the garden, but based on my HIT experience on Saturday I decided not to run yesterday. We did the three 20-second burst of running, but each time it felt like it was 10 seconds too long… I was totally exhausted afterwards!

The garden is looking pretty neat though, with the table out for the summer and already used twice, whilst the tea-house has a new carpet courtesy of Kim.

March 19, 2012

The lurgi blues

Oh my, the winter lurgi this year was a minger, with a razor-blade sore throat and days of incessant coughing. Loads of people have had it already and no-one seems to have a good word about it… and if you’ve not had it, then it’s one to avoid at all costs!

Thankfully mine is on the exit ramp now, so I will hopefully be back in my runners next weekend.

Kim and I did manage another training HIT on the 13th and my fitness had already improved sufficiently to bring my knees up while I ran wildly on the spot… thankfully out of the public view! Even after just 60 seconds of exercise I was SO hot, but there is definitely a benefit to be gained.

It’s a very rare thing for me to ask for sponsorship (and I’m not breaking that habit now either), but my good friend Daren is going to be running the 50-mile Paris Ecotrail next weekend and he is collecting for a brilliant charity that he started in memory of his brother, Clive. The charity encourages young people to go on adventures… a little like the TMB clallenge that Daren and I went on in the summer, the link for which is on the menu above.

So even if you don’t know Daren but you can spare a couple of quid, please donate to a really great cause at http://www.justgiving.com/Daren-Packham – Thank you very much!

March 8, 2012

Minute three

We’ve just done our third HIT session and all I can say is that I’m glad each segment is no longer than 20 seconds, and that there are only three of them!

I guess that our natural instinct is to hold back something in reserve, and we can only overcome this default setting because of the short durations involved. At the rate I was pushing, arms and legs pumping away like a steam train on full tilt, I would flat out on the floor even at 30 seconds!

Having only completed three minutes of exercise in the last nine days, it’s possibly too early to look for signs of progress… but it’s fair to say that none are yet apparent!

March 3, 2012

Minute two

Sitting here PANTING after our second minute of HIT (High Intensity Training).

My goodness, what an amazing workout! Though my body clearly didn’t register the sports-scientists assertion that you can do it without sweating… I am HOT!

February 29, 2012March 3, 2012

One minute of exercise

If anyone could have looked into our kitchen just now, they would have seen both Kim and I running on the spot, flat out, arms and legs working like dirling whirvishes.

And not once, or even twice, but three times, for 20 seconds each time, with a couple of minutes for recovery in between!

We must have looked really silly!

This is further to the Horizon programme last night (previous post), which showed that people can gain a demonstrably positive health effect from doing just one minute of exercise in this way, three times a week.

We don’t have a cycle machine, and our running machine doesn’t change speed that quickly, so we are going to be testing the technique over the coming weeks by running on the spot instead. I can report that it certainly gets the heart racing!