JC's Musings

High Intensity Intermittent Training

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Are you or your athletes exercising too hard, too often? Good friend Peter Mellow brought this article from the NY Times, “Too Much High-Intensity Exercise May be Bad For Your Health”, to my attention. Basically the article cited research that reported people who worked out strenuously every day developed sudden and severe declines in the function of their mitochondria, and emergent signs of blood sugar dysfunction. This is noteworthy as the mitochondria are the energy generators found in every cell of your body.

I asked another good mate Professor Paul Laursen, co-founder of HIIT Science about this and his response was, “ultimately if you are in a chronic stress/inflammatory state - then you are ultimately adding more stress to the system (cortisol - glucocorticoid) - so adds even more sugar in the system and could in fact blunt mitochondrial biogenesis signalling.”

“The key to getting HIIT working is to apply it in a healthy body. So if the body is healthy (in balance), then its money. If not, then it can actually be counter productive and the person should be doing diet and walking/light aerobic/stress management strategies first.”

Do you need to dial back on the those HIIT sessions?