I use Intal, which has to be ordered from out of the country at this point. It really helps with my exercise-induced asthma, and doesn’t kick up my blood sugar like Albuterol.
There are a lot of options for exercise-induced asthma. Unlike DSeid, I am an adult doctor and I have seen at least one PE that came on with strenuous exercise in the gym. In fact, the patient went to the ER and they missed it becuase they were too busy looking for heart problems. All I can say is that there are certain things I do not mess around with and chest pain/shortness of breath with exercise is right up at the top of the list.
Huh, well you learn something new every day. I am familiar with Tabata, but in my mind, it was the reverse: 10 seconds of effort, 20 of rest (which is where I assumed the minimum 1:2 effort/rest ratio came from). I obviously had reversed it in my mind for some reason - ignorance fought! Thanks!
I could swear that’s what I remember, too, although I don’t think it was the Tabata study, as that’s not ringing any bells. When I did HIIT, it was typically 1:1 or 1:2 work:recovery, but I see online now that 2:1 is pretty common. That just sounds intense to me, even with 8 cycles. Holy crap.
Bad news all, I’m dead now. I’m writing this using a mix of electronic voice phenomena and dragon speech to text. However there is a doctor who can bring my mangled corpse back to life for $28,999. That is a hard number to remember, but to make it easier that is about the price of the sports package for a 2014 honda accord. I will post my paypal address later if people want to start donating money to the revive Wesley Clark’s corpse fund.
It is intense, highly intense, that’s point. 
Probably most who think they are doing “Tabata intervals” are not because, as you note 170% of VO2max???
The practical approach I’ve read is to do as much all out effort such that your last all out effort can be almost as fast as your first before you collapse.
Again, lots gets thrown under the HIIT umbrella. I suspect the embrace of HIIT as “the” method is now getting oversold.
BTW, Wesley, you survived? Did you end up having it checked out?
Ah on preview a new meaning to a zombie post!
Noted. I just thought 1:1 or 1:2 all-out:recovery was already high intensity enough compared to regular style intervals (which is what I was used to in high school track. You’d do a fast pace, but not all out for each interval. More recently, I had been doing what I thought was HIIT with my wimpier ratios occasionally to mix things up in my workout.) I’m pretty sure I’d be unconscious in a pool of vomit if I tried Tabata.
I’ve exercised much of my life but got out of the cardio habit for awhile, last winter I started doing some light jogging again and stuff like treadmill and elliptical at the gym. I started to have problems similar to Wesley’s but not quite as bad, I didn’t have any coughing but I had chest pains and numbness in my arm. Well we all know what that sounds like so I did get it checked out and after lots of tests I was basically told I showed no cardiac problems during any number of tests (including a stress test) so they don’t really know what it was. It went away after the winter ended but then came back this winter, definitely odd but I doubt I’ll go back to the doctor for identical symptoms that go away after 20-30 minutes and were not signs of anything before.
I haven’t seen my PCP yet, but looking online supposedly hard exercise can burst capillaries in the airway (putting fluid in them I believe), and do some damage to the gas exchange ability in the lungs. Its supposedly not a serious problem and relatively common among people who push themselves too hard, but that does seem to fit the symptoms I had.
For about 24 hours after this happened (it seems mostly gone now) I would have some pain if I took too deep a breath, and I was coughing up a little bit of transparent mucus. The only other time I have had symptoms like that is at the tail end of bronchitis when the infection has been conquered but my lungs still have liquids in them that I need to eject.
But being a zombie athlete makes it all the easier. From now on, all you’ll want to do is T-R-A-A-A-I-I-I-N-N.
The range used in protocols, all under the same umbrella, is crazy. From 20 second at the high effort to 5 minutes, from 10 seconds rest to 5 minutes, in various combinations. One, also tested and validatedapproach, is the Wingate protocol a 30 second high 4 minute low set of repeats.
Another studied protocol is 8 seconds of high effort followed by 12 of lower activity repeated for 20 minutes (with warm up and cool down)
Now I for one am completely convinced that periods of high intensity are great but a few things must be noted in response to the fad-like all-that embrace HIIT is getting as of late.
The original Tabata study included a warm up and a cool down period and 30 minute session each week of steady state as well.
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It seems to me that there is a fair amount of time being spent with heart rates that are in aerobic range, even if some of that heart elevation is the result of incomplete recovery in “rest periods” from periods of red line effort.
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The studies demonstrate what HIIT does in isolation compared to relatively easy steady state of 70%. Not compared to other methods like tempo (race day pace) runs or other mixed approach methods. Or as an aerobic component of a program that also includes resistance exercise. The extrapolations that have become popularized are beyond what the data shows.
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The studies so far mostly look at short term gains, 2 weeks to 6 weeks, not what happens beyond that. Most of the studies use people who are already fit, usually meaning doing some steady state. In that context interval training was a new stimulus and steady state was what they had already adapted to. It is pretty well established that a new stimulus brings new response. I am curious to see a study that shows the results in groups that do HIIT and only HIIT long term and then randomize them into one group that keeps doing HIIT and another that does some longer steady state both long slow once a week and some tempo pace … I’d suspect they’d see dramatic VO2 improvements in the latter group in that case.
For the little it is worth my guess is that your mixing it up with intervals, and likely doing some tempo pace (lactate threshold) work too, is pretty close to ideal. Here is an article that argues against the all-that place of HIIT, at least for endurance athletes. The section on “Intensity for Recreational Athletes” is very interesting. What they see happening in recreational athletes is
I have never understood HIIT protocols that called for 1-4 minutes of continuous high intensity activity. How a person can do that w/o being too winded and loaded with lactic acid to continue is beyond me. Even with 30 second bursts my legs are so full of lactic acid I can’t continue at full effort.
However speaking from my own personal experience HIIT has been an excellent tool. In college I would do 2-3 hours a week of steady state aerobics (pulse about 75% of max), plus an additional 2-3 hours a week of walking. This had no impact on my resting pulse, and I would get winded after 10 minutes of moderately intense activity (one on one basketball for example) or an hour of hiking.
Doing HIIT (with no other activity, just 20-30 minute of HIIT exercises 2x a week, of which only 8 minutes a week is actual high intensity exercise and the rest being warm ups, cool downs or resting cycles), I have cut about 15 points off my resting pulse, I am able to hike for several hours (with breaks of course) and back when I did moderately intense activity I had much more stamina. What drew me into HIIT in the first place was when in college I wanted to play one on one basketball with my roommate. Under my old regimen I would get winded, when I added in HIIT I could play with him for as long as I wanted and keep up with him.
It has worked well for me. My body responds to high intensity, low volume training (both strength training and aerobics).
There’s high intensity and high intensity. Obviously few of us actually know what 170% of our VO2 max (or 200% which is used in other tested protocols) … the general principle seems to be though that longer intervals means less “all-out”, with the target being that the last interval should be barely able to be completed with the same intensity if not just falling off a little. So most longer intervals are aimed for 90% to 100% of VO2max, not well over VO2max.
Obviously I find this stuff fascinating …
Not everybody in the real world manages to push themselves like you do.
There seem to be strong genetic factors on how one responds to aerobic exercise, and some speculation that markers will be identified that can predict what sort of training is most likely to be most effective for a given individual.
Still alive OP?
Edit: I see you posted in other threads today. Congrats on still being alive
I’ve had similar symptoms (minus weird taste in mouth and chest pains) from high-intensity training. My main culprit was always something like Fran, which is an utter fucking bitch of an ass-kicker at lower weights, and pure hell when doing the heavy version. I’ve also had symptoms from all-out intervals (something like sprint 50 m, walk back, immediately start the next sprint when you cross the start line, 10 repeats) particularly in the cold.
For me, I’m pretty sure it’s a kind of exercise-induced asthma. I’ve had coughing last for hours, even up to the next day. It’s only happened a handful of times, with increased chances when exercising outside in cold weather. An adequate warm-up and not doing high-intensity work after a break, or after not having done similar exercise recently would probably help prevent it. I know that one post-Fran coughing session in my early days was almost certainly because I didn’t warm up properly.
As a check on intensity, you can hold intervals to a pace or time. I do both timed/paced versions and “honest” intervals. On timed ones, I’ll prescribe a penalty exercise to be performed for any interval that falls more than a set time from the previous effort; 2 seconds per 100 m interval, for example. You can also set recovery intervals at a set time, or do rest equal to effort time. You should have some variation to get better response even if you have a specific progression in mind.
This sounds similar to what I experienced when I was first getting into shape, and before I started treating my exercise-induced asthma.
Best news was - first time I used my inhaler before a run, I cut 5 minutes off my 5k time. Now I do yoga breathing exercises while I’m running (well, for the early part of my run). Using the inhaler allowed me to actually work out my lungs, and now I don’t need it for my “easy” workouts (walking, relaxation yoga, easy hiking).
Do you have allergies, and are allergic to a giant pile of things (Like, you get hay fever two or three times a year)? You may have Atopic Allergies, which really just means you’ve got a moody immune response (It’s like a teenage emo… it’s just a hater). It’s not much different than treating co-morbid allergies and asthma, but the medication regimines can be a bit different.
Edit to include link: Atopy - Wikipedia
Semi-related, I ran across a reference to this study in a fitness article the other day. In brief: the optimal recovery mode (active vs. passive) depends on the interval between sprints. In the two durations they tested (45 seconds and 180 seconds), with a 45 s break, passive (i.e.: complete rest) is better for maximizing output during short work intervals, while 180 s between efforts had better outcomes with active rest. So, if you’re going to do intervals, looks like choosing a recovery protocol ahead of time and setting a strict timer for on/off would be very beneficial instead of winging it. Otherwise, you’ll probably be falling into a half-assed recovery pattern.
I can’t argue with your advice but I am not so sure about basing it off of those study findings.
They are looking at one short term outcome - short term subsequent performance on a repeated sprint test (7 5s sprints separated by 20 second rests with the mean peak power overthose trials being the measured outcome), and after a short term application of the interventions (4 trials). It is interesting (albeit not too shocking) that in that specific circumstance passive rest gave better results on subsequent repeated sprints with shorter rest intervals and active rest with longer rest intervals but hard to conclude a general statement that such means it is “better” in any broader fitness or health outcome or if continued over any longer term.
Returning to this I am wondering Sleel if the article you read was expressing anything other than “No Duh” to the study result.
Short recovery period means you have to actually more fully rest to be able to handle the next interval at full anaerobic peak, and hitting the highest possible full anaerobic peak (not VO2max or a variety of other measures) is what you are trying to train to do best in a repeated sprint test. Longer recovery can allow pretty full recovery even with active rest and yet still likely hit the interval at full bore, adding in a little aerobic conditioning that might aid in faster intersprint recovery and getting up to full bore a wee bit faster to boot. Hence BOTH the longer rest and shorter rest intervals gave the same result with passive rest (PR) but the active rest with incomplete recovery in the shorter trial casued a drop while the addition of some extra work that still allowed full recovery in the active rest (AR) arm of the longer rest period resulted in better repeated sprint results. The order was: AR180 12.7 W/kg; PR180 and PR45 12.0; AR45 11.4.
The take away I read is that if your goal is improved performance on the repeated sprint test or possibly even more generalizably anaerobic peak performance longer active rest periods with full all out intervals will do better than other approaches.
It has no bearing on what would raise VO2 better, or any other performance or health related measure other than that.