A brutal way to get fit in five days

[Itsguy]

In the spirit of the 'weight loss motivation thread', I thought I'd share a recent experience. An interesting paper has suggested that doing six high intensity interval training sessions in five days, in a repeating pattern of twice in a day followed by one rest day, is more effective than spreading them over two weeks. This is surprising, as it sounds a lot like over-training with not enough rest days, particularly if you happen to be on the wrong side of middle age. Nonetheless, being foolhardy and in a hurry, I thought I'd give it a go.

The paper was based on 30 minute HIIT sessions, but as an experiment I applied it to my usual 4 minute Tabata routines instead, to get back in shape after the summer break. These are a particularly brutal form of high intensity training, comprising eight 20 second bursts of exercise, with ten second rests. The 20 second bursts have to be absolutely flat out, or it doesn't count and may not have much benefit. You can find suitably hard exercises online (for instance burpees, aka bastard jumps). Done correctly, it feels like throwing yourself at a wall, and condenses an hour's exercise into four minutes, perhaps leaving you thinking that the hour would have been easier. But at least it's over quickly, and it benefits your aerobic fitness as much as your strength.

On the first day I was pleasantly surprised that it was possible to do two sessions in a day at all, with a few aches the following morning to show it was working, but nothing too bad. Unfortunately I went to the pub on the rest day, so the session the following morning left me so shaky I could hardly climb a flight of stairs. This routine is not for the faint hearted. Surprisingly though, things improved from there, and ended on a high with a couple of sessions that were way stronger than day one.

After the final day I felt great, and looked different too, but the real test was a badminton match the day after the final rest day. Poor sleep and a brief warmup meant the first two games were as hard as ever, but then I was able to cruise through the rest of the 90 minutes, outlasting my opponent. Stairs on the walk home afterwards are usually a challenge (do not underestimate badminton), but this time they were fine. It felt like the five days of intensive interval training had drastically improved my recovery time, which makes sense in a way, as you're telling your body that's what you need to be able to do.

Common sense suggests you should not attempt this unless you usually do some form of exercise and have a base level of fitness, and some familiarity with high intensity interval training, otherwise you would probably pull every muscle in your body, or end up in hospital. Please don't blame me if you're daft enough to try this. But from personal experience, while it's hard, it's also motivating as the end is in sight right from the start, and the results come quickly. I expect to do this again in January to shape up for the new year, or before a skiing holiday, or whenever I need to get back on track quickly. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else tries it.

[walkerwek1958]

Interesting!

I'll study it in detail when I`ve got time, I`m generally sceptical about any 'get fit quick' regimes. My gut reaction is that this would be dangerous for someone who's not got a decent base level of fitness and is confident they're in good physical shape, this sounds like the sort of thing a couch potato might latch onto with potentially disastrous results such as dropping dead.

From my running days I always found that sharp high-intensity interval work was an effective way of improving fitness quickly, it suited me but didn`t suit everyone, but this was based on a good aerobic base level to start with and that can only be achieved by steady running or similar.

[Passenger]

Cut out the pub/ drinking at home for 5 days*, now that's brutal. Do the exercise, then see how your body has changed.

*Longer is better.

[pugster]

looks like its just about increasing lung capacity , nothing is going to get you fit in 5 days - end of , also how long before any improvements are back to baseline.
killing yourself for 5 days will just put most people off doing anything long term , and its sustainability thats important for any excercise.

[Itsguy]

My gut reaction is that this would be dangerous for someone who's not got a decent base level of fitness and is confident they're in good physical shape, this sounds like the sort of thing a couch potato might latch onto with potentially disastrous results such as dropping dead.

Yes agreed, I was wary of posting this for that reason. Without some base level of fitness and previous experience at HIIT, I doubt you'd survive day one. It would be better to build up gradually. But for getting back into shape quickly when you've previously been reasonably fit and have some muscle memory, it seems to do the trick. A few sport supplements like creatine, and arginine + ornithine seem like a good idea over the five days, to maximise the benefits.

looks like its just about increasing lung capacity , nothing is going to get you fit in 5 days - end of , also how long before any improvements are back to baseline.
killing yourself for 5 days will just put most people off doing anything long term , and its sustainability thats important for any excercise.

I think the idea would be to go back to a more normal sustainable routine afterwards, that's what I'm doing. I'm just using this to jump start fitness after a break.