Training Question: Uninterrupted vs Interrrupted

In article
<[email hidden]>,

(PeteCresswell) said:

I'm no athlete - strictly a ride-because-it-feels-good cyclist and an
exercise-because-its-the-right-thing-to-do-and-I-don't-wanna-puke-when-I-get-back-on-the-bike
workout person.

I have zero interest in maximizing my endurance or capacity for competition.

My main goal when working out is to make sure that, in the long run, the
pleasure exceeds the pain - so I'll keep at it, and not messing myself up by
blowing an artery or causing some kind of overuse damage to what's left of my
joints.

My question is basically this: does contiguous effort trump the same number of
minutes of intermittent effort? Not onesies-twosies.... but, say, two
half-hour sessions or three 20-minute sessions instead of a continuous hour - or
three fifteen-minute sessions instead of 45 minutes.... or four 11-minute
sessions instead of 45 minutes....

I'd think that somewhere the idea of smaller intervals has to break down because
I imagine some sort of threshold before aerobic-type metabolism is provoked.

When it's cold, I get all my exercise on a stair master-type machine.

Typically I do 45 minutes to an hour on the thing straight through. But
sometimes, in the back of my mind, there's a little voice saying "You don't
really want go subject yourself to that *again*, do you?"

I can do 32 minutes at what the machine calls level "7" before my heart rate
gets to 90% max and I elect to drop it down to level "6"..... and maybe "5"
sometime later on when my heart rate starts nudging 90% again.

Instead of 45 minutes of that (32 minutes at 7, maybe 10 more at 6...); what if
I did two 23-minute seshes at 7 - one in the morning and one in the afternoon?

What about 4 11-minute sessions at 7?

I'm thinking that the advantage of that is that it becomes no big deal - like
taking a dump... just get on the thing, do it, and get on with whatever I was
working on at the time. Maybe I would even come to view it as something to
look forward to: a nice little break from sitting in front of a workstation.

Not looking for fine distinctions... just where the conditioning effect of
shorter and shorter sessions stop adding up to anything like the effect of the
one long session that they sum up to.

This subject has got to have been studied to death.

Can anybody summarize the commonly-accepted knowledge?

Not this part, but I can address the earlier part.

We share a common goal on conditioning. I tried to do
everything at moderate levels, but never got better.
Now I do most everything at moderate levels. Then I
pick my places and hammer for a bit until it hurts.
Nothing extreme, simply going to my limit. I got
stronger, and riding the bike is even more fun than it
was. I find that near the end of a ride is a good time
to empty the gas tank, leaving a couple-three miles to
cool out the rest of the way home. Another thing is
that I ride my utility bike in 50/18 almost all the
time, even that half-block length wall over near the
market.

I cannot say anything about stationary exercise
equipment.

--
Michael Press

On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:23:54 -0500, "(PeteCresswell)" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

I can do 32 minutes at what the machine calls level "7" before my heart rate
gets to 90% max and I elect to drop it down to level "6"..... and maybe "5"
sometime later on when my heart rate starts nudging 90% again.

If your HR is still rising after 32 minutes of steady effort, it's
cardiac drift and you're not approaching 90%, because your Max HR
after that time is higher than it would have been if you'd tried a
maximal effort in the first 10 minutes of exercise.

http://physiotherapy.curtin.edu.au/resources/educational-resources/exphys/00/monitoring.cfm

is titled "Monitoring exercise heart rate during training is not worth
the bother!", which may be a bit of hyperbole, but it does point out a
number of caveats which must be understood before relying on HR as a
measure of exercise intensity.

One of the things you might conclude from this is that it's easier to
measure your effort with an HRM if you do four 15 minute sessions
instead of one 1 hour session, but this is a poor reason for varying
your exercise regime.

Kinky Cowboy*

*Batteries not included
May contain traces of nuts
Your milage may vary

Per Kinky Cowboy:

Quoted message said:

If your HR is still rising after 32 minutes of steady effort, it's
cardiac drift and you're not approaching 90%,

If so, then cardiac drift is something that changes with conditioning.

After a long layoff from the stair master, I started doing it again.

At first, my HR would hit 90% at a given intensity level within 12 minutes.

As weeks went by, the time it took to reach 90% gradually increased. Now it's
32 minutes.

My (totally uneducated) take is that when I'm working at that level, I'm beyond
my aerobic threshold. In the earlier days, I was more beyond it and in recent
days I'm less beyond it. But as long as I'm beyond it, something-or-other is
slowly building up in my body - which makes my heart want to work harder.

I'm guessing that eventually I'll be able to go at that level for an hour or
more with my HR staying below 90% - or until some other physiological limit sets
in.

I'd agree with the article's observation that HR monitoring is useful for
avoiding over training. Although at my dilettante levels "over training" is
probably too grandiose a word, without monitoring my HR I have a history of just
going until I drop - which has consequences later on: I get hyper for the next
6-8 hours and my judgment goes all to hell.
--
PeteCresswell

On Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:46:47 -0500, "(PeteCresswell)" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Per Kinky Cowboy:

Quoted message said:

If your HR is still rising after 32 minutes of steady effort, it's
cardiac drift and you're not approaching 90%,

If so, then cardiac drift is something that changes with conditioning.

That would not be surprising; while the exact mechanism seems not to
be well understood, one hypothesis involves slow increase in core
temperature, and it is known that temperature regulation can be
improved with training

Quoted message said:

After a long layoff from the stair master, I started doing it again.

At first, my HR would hit 90% at a given intensity level within 12 minutes.

As weeks went by, the time it took to reach 90% gradually increased. Now it's
32 minutes.

If that was all at the same output level, it wouldn't necessarily
indicate that your cardiac drift rate had changed, but more likely
that you were climbing the same slope from a lower starting point.

As I said, it doesn't do to obsess about this notional 90% for a
couple of reasons; firstly, that HRmax is actually quite hard to
determine outside a physiology lab, and secondly that even if you have
determined it for a particular set of conditions, it might be
different if you change the ambient temperature, your diet, or just
the point in the exercise cycle at which you measure it.

The other possibility is that it's nothing to do with cardiac drift at
all, and the effect is actually caused by a steady drop in efficiency
as you tire and lose your form. This would mean you'd be burning more
fuel to achieve the same output power

FWIW, I did some long intervals last week (1 min effort, 4 min rest)
all at the same output power (36mph on my rollers) and my peak HR at
the end of each effort was 183, 188, and 190 bpm

Kinky Cowboy*

*Batteries not included
May contain traces of nuts
Your milage may vary

(PeteCresswell) said:

I'm no athlete - strictly a ride-because-it-feels-good cyclist and an
exercise-because-its-the-right-thing-to-do-and-I-don't-wanna-puke-when-I-get-back-on-the-bike
workout person.

I have zero interest in maximizing my endurance or capacity for competition.

In that case do what Eddy recommended-'ride lots', when you feel good
and have the time, ride, when you don't, don't.

Quoted message said:

My main goal when working out is to make sure that, in the long run, the
pleasure exceeds the pain - so I'll keep at it, and not messing myself up by
blowing an artery or causing some kind of overuse damage to what's left of my
joints.

My question is basically this: does contiguous effort trump the same number of
minutes of intermittent effort? Not onesies-twosies.... but, say, two
half-hour sessions or three 20-minute sessions instead of a continuous hour - or
three fifteen-minute sessions instead of 45 minutes.... or four 11-minute
sessions instead of 45 minutes....

I'd think that somewhere the idea of smaller intervals has to break down because
I imagine some sort of threshold before aerobic-type metabolism is provoked.

When it's cold, I get all my exercise on a stair master-type machine.

Typically I do 45 minutes to an hour on the thing straight through. But
sometimes, in the back of my mind, there's a little voice saying "You don't
really want go subject yourself to that *again*, do you?"

I can do 32 minutes at what the machine calls level "7" before my heart rate
gets to 90% max and I elect to drop it down to level "6"..... and maybe "5"
sometime later on when my heart rate starts nudging 90% again.

Instead of 45 minutes of that (32 minutes at 7, maybe 10 more at 6...); what if
I did two 23-minute seshes at 7 - one in the morning and one in the afternoon?

What about 4 11-minute sessions at 7?

I'm thinking that the advantage of that is that it becomes no big deal - like
taking a dump... just get on the thing, do it, and get on with whatever I was
working on at the time. Maybe I would even come to view it as something to
look forward to: a nice little break from sitting in front of a workstation.

Not looking for fine distinctions... just where the conditioning effect of
shorter and shorter sessions stop adding up to anything like the effect of the
one long session that they sum up to.

This subject has got to have been studied to death.

Can anybody summarize the commonly-accepted knowledge?

--
PeteCresswell

Per Qui si parla Campagnolo:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I have zero interest in maximizing my endurance or capacity for competition.

In that case do what Eddy recommended-'ride lots', when you feel good
and have the time, ride, when you don't, don't.

I've tried that and it doesn't work for me. I think my pace is too slow and
during cold weather I don't ride unless it's over 40 degrees.

--
PeteCresswell

In article
<[email hidden]>,

Kinky Cowboy said:

On Sat, 06 Jan 2007 09:46:47 -0500, "(PeteCresswell)" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Per Kinky Cowboy:

Quoted message said:

If your HR is still rising after 32 minutes of steady effort, it's
cardiac drift and you're not approaching 90%,

If so, then cardiac drift is something that changes with conditioning.

That would not be surprising; while the exact mechanism seems not to
be well understood, one hypothesis involves slow increase in core
temperature, and it is known that temperature regulation can be
improved with training

Everything improves with even a very modest exercise
program. Two things.

* Fibrillation of skeletal muscles at 7 Hz is how we
generate heat to maintain core body temperature. Decent
muscle tone, contrasted with borderline atrophy, makes
generating the necessary heat easier. Result is a
person not so sensitive to a cold environment.

* A modest exercise program, contrasted with
inactivity, turns on the production of hormones that
bind to adipose cells mobilizing fat and turning it
into glycerol and free fatty acids in the blood stream.

--
Michael Press

(PeteCresswell) said:

I'd agree with the article's observation that HR monitoring is useful for
avoiding over training. Although at my dilettante levels "over training" is
probably too grandiose a word, without monitoring my HR I have a history of just
going until I drop - which has consequences later on: I get hyper for the next
6-8 hours and my judgment goes all to hell.

The usefulness factor of my heart rate monitor toy is questionable.

It's very useful on the nasty mountain climb challenges my bike club
loves. I know when my heartrate goes above 190 that I should stop and
walk the bike.

Also, if I find myself entirely waaaay too interested in the way the
numbers are moving I've probably hit the happy happy endorphin high
point.

-M

"Qui si parla Campagnolo" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

(PeteCresswell) said:

I'm no athlete - strictly a ride-because-it-feels-good cyclist and an
exercise-because-its-the-right-thing-to-do-and-I-don't-wanna-puke-when-I-get-back-on-the-bike
workout person.

I have zero interest in maximizing my endurance or capacity for
competition.

In that case do what Eddy recommended-'ride lots', when you feel good
and have the time, ride, when you don't, don't.

Quoted message said:

My main goal when working out is to make sure that, in the long run, the
pleasure exceeds the pain - so I'll keep at it, and not messing myself
up by
blowing an artery or causing some kind of overuse damage to what's left
of my
joints.

My question is basically this: does contiguous effort trump the same
number of
minutes of intermittent effort? Not onesies-twosies.... but, say, two
half-hour sessions or three 20-minute sessions instead of a continuous
hour - or
three fifteen-minute sessions instead of 45 minutes.... or four 11-minute
sessions instead of 45 minutes....

Wether your tagret is to increase the power you can maintain longer periods
(> 30 min), the intervals should be at least 15 minutes to have the training
effect, e.g. do 2*20 minutes, and have either a short break or reduce the
resistance for couple of minutes. This would correspond as 1*40 min as
altrernative. Instead, eg. 4*10 minutes wouldn't as effectively increase the
FTP (Functional Threshold Power).

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I'd think that somewhere the idea of smaller intervals has to break down
because
I imagine some sort of threshold before aerobic-type metabolism is
provoked.

When it's cold, I get all my exercise on a stair master-type machine.

Typically I do 45 minutes to an hour on the thing straight through. But
sometimes, in the back of my mind, there's a little voice saying "You
don't
really want go subject yourself to that *again*, do you?"

I can do 32 minutes at what the machine calls level "7" before my heart
rate
gets to 90% max and I elect to drop it down to level "6"..... and maybe
"5"
sometime later on when my heart rate starts nudging 90% again.

Instead of 45 minutes of that (32 minutes at 7, maybe 10 more at 6...);
what if
I did two 23-minute seshes at 7 - one in the morning and one in the
afternoon?

What about 4 11-minute sessions at 7?

2*23 would well correspond 1*45, not so much matter weather there is 10
minute or 10 hour break between. Rather try to keep level "7" instead of
dropping to level "6".

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

I'm thinking that the advantage of that is that it becomes no big deal -
like
taking a dump... just get on the thing, do it, and get on with whatever I
was
working on at the time. Maybe I would even come to view it as something
to
look forward to: a nice little break from sitting in front of a
workstation.

Not looking for fine distinctions... just where the conditioning effect
of
shorter and shorter sessions stop adding up to anything like the effect
of the
one long session that they sum up to.

Wether you'd shorten the sessions to e.g. 5 minutes (5*5 minutes) and
increase the resistance, training might develope more the maximal oxygen
uptake. Even shorter intervals (1-2 minutes) with still higher resistance,
would be more anaerobic capacity exercises.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

This subject has got to have been studied to death.

Can anybody summarize the commonly-accepted knowledge?

--
PeteCresswell

Per Antti:

Quoted message said:

2*23 would well correspond 1*45, not so much matter weather there is 10
minute or 10 hour break between. Rather try to keep level "7" instead of
dropping to level "6".

That's what I was hoping to hear.

I think I'm going to try it for a few weeks and see how my numbers hold up.
--
PeteCresswell

(PeteCresswell) said:

Per Antti:

Quoted message said:

2*23 would well correspond 1*45, not so much matter weather there is 10
minute or 10 hour break between. Rather try to keep level "7" instead of
dropping to level "6".

That's what I was hoping to hear.

I think I'm going to try it for a few weeks and see how my numbers hold up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fartlek

Also translated as "playing with farts" by those lacking in
seriousness.

Using the natural and man-made features of the land to do efforts of
self-governed intensity and duration, with periods of sweet recovery in
between.

Better than any stair machine could ever hope for, except maybe the
petite brunette one rank up and two over.

Key IMHO is real recovery in between efforts. And making it fun. Easier
when you know you can "quit" any time, of course <g>.

"Taking the drudgery out by eliminating the timekeeping". Whatever
works; some people use the watch and the strict schedules to great
effect. --D-y

(PeteCresswell) said:

I'm no athlete - strictly a ride-because-it-feels-good cyclist and an
exercise-because-its-the-right-thing-to-do-and-I-don't-wanna-puke-when-I-get-back-on-the-bike
workout person.

I have zero interest in maximizing my endurance or capacity for competition.

My main goal when working out is to make sure that, in the long run, the
pleasure exceeds the pain - so I'll keep at it, and not messing myself up by
blowing an artery or causing some kind of overuse damage to what's left of my
joints.

My question is basically this: does contiguous effort trump the same number of
minutes of intermittent effort? Not onesies-twosies.... but, say, two
half-hour sessions or three 20-minute sessions instead of a continuous hour - or
three fifteen-minute sessions instead of 45 minutes.... or four 11-minute
sessions instead of 45 minutes....

I'd think that somewhere the idea of smaller intervals has to break down because
I imagine some sort of threshold before aerobic-type metabolism is provoked.

When it's cold, I get all my exercise on a stair master-type machine.

Typically I do 45 minutes to an hour on the thing straight through. But
sometimes, in the back of my mind, there's a little voice saying "You don't
really want go subject yourself to that *again*, do you?"

I can do 32 minutes at what the machine calls level "7" before my heart rate
gets to 90% max and I elect to drop it down to level "6"..... and maybe "5"
sometime later on when my heart rate starts nudging 90% again.

Instead of 45 minutes of that (32 minutes at 7, maybe 10 more at 6...); what if
I did two 23-minute seshes at 7 - one in the morning and one in the afternoon?

What about 4 11-minute sessions at 7?

I'm thinking that the advantage of that is that it becomes no big deal - like
taking a dump... just get on the thing, do it, and get on with whatever I was
working on at the time. Maybe I would even come to view it as something to
look forward to: a nice little break from sitting in front of a workstation.

Not looking for fine distinctions... just where the conditioning effect of
shorter and shorter sessions stop adding up to anything like the effect of the
one long session that they sum up to.

This subject has got to have been studied to death.

Can anybody summarize the commonly-accepted knowledge?

--
PeteCresswell

I favor short and intense workouts/rides. Even if your goal is to just
ride and enjoy yourself and stay fit, having the goal/plan of riding
hard/intense to increase your speed, results in far better physical
improvements to you. Riding the same medium pace for mile after mile
will not get you much healthier. Its healthy. But you can ride miles
and miles at a medium pace and still be 50 pounds overweight. You only
get so healthy/good and then you do not improve upon your fitness.
Your cardio vascular, wind power, etc. reaches a plateau and there it
remains. Its the focus of training intensely, improving speed, that
will force you to lose weight, improve your overall physical well
being. You get your overall health to the next plateau.

This past year I rode frequent evening rides of 30-50 miles at a fairly
brisk pace with groups. That short, hard, fast effort several times a
week did far more for my long distance riding than training by riding
long rides at a medium pace. And my overall health, weight loss, etc.
were better from the hard intense short efforts.