How would you incorporate HICT into daily training? You can spend freely because you have a lot of reserves that haven't even been touched yet.

It becomes the metabolic equivalent of extra cash in your bank account.

On the other hand, you can train it to associate the workload with calm breathing, good positioning (meaning the alignment of your joints), and good cognitive function, and then you'll be capable of putting out physical work easily. Eventually, they begin to associate all physical movement with a surge of stress and cortisol. If someone has to elevate their heart rate and flood their body with cortisol and catecholamines in order to do push-ups for five minutes, then they'll never be able to do push-ups without bringing that stress response along with it. The emotional perspective built into the activity becomes trained and associated in the same way that a movement pattern does. It's the ability to exert a lot of force calmly and repeatedly, like your 80-year old grandpa who can still throw hay bales all day without looking tired because to him it's not a big deal. You're improving what your brain sees as a 'go all day' level of output. When you do something like HICT, it's an opportunity to teach your brain that you can put out a large amount of continuous work without requiring a stress-response to do it. Exercise is teaching your brain to make a vast array of associations and predictions. HICT workouts have an important component, which is the mental side of exercise. Most lifters train the anaerobic system day-in and day-out, but they don't always train the other two, particularly the ATP-PC system, and that's where HICT training comes in. This enables better performance and recovery, and keeps you from developing limiting factors that leave you feeling stuck and stalled out. Thus, it's important to train all three systems over the course of a long-term program. These systems work together in a symbiotic way, meaning that if one of them is impaired it can hinder the performance of the others. It also drives the recovery of your ATP-PC and anaerobic systems, so the better your aerobic system, the faster and more effectively you can recover between sets of heavy lifts or sprint intervals. The aerobic system is the least powerful of the three, but can function literally all day and can alternate between stored fat or carbohydrate as a fuel source. These systems are trainable, so your actual capacity in them is dependent on a host of factors like your training background, genetics, and nutrition. It's as powerful as the ATP-PC system, but is usually fully spent after about 60-90 seconds of maximal effort. This one runs without requiring oxygen and burns carbohydrate, like the glucose and glycogen in your bloodstream, liver, and muscles. It'll last for roughly 10-14 seconds before fading out. If you're doing something heavy or powerful, like 1-5 reps of squats or a short Prowler sprint, it's employing this system. This is your shortest-lived and most powerful system. They're all working at any given time, but one tends to dominate over the others depending on the activity. You've got three different energy systems in your body. So you might do 15 total minutes each of step-ups, ring push-ups, and chest-supported rows. HICT bouts are typically 5-20 minutes total per workout, per movement pattern. You do 2 reps, breathe a little, 2 reps, breathe a little, and continue in this way.

It just needs to be below about ten seconds of total work, and ideally below 5 seconds so that you don't have to rest as long.įor example, you do a set of 1-3 push-ups and then rest while taking a few breaths. In order to keep each effort strong, we keep the reps very low, usually 1-3 at a time, sometimes 5 reps for a quicker movement like a sledgehammer swing. This heart rate 'max' will vary from person to person, but a general rule is that you should be able to breathe through your nose the whole time. Dragging a tire while keeping your heart rate below about 150 is essentially a HICT workout.

Goblet squats, step-ups, push-ups, and ring rows work well. The idea is to use a big movement that can be done sustainably for a long time.

Heavy lifing atp