Zone 2 cardio, women, and Stacy Sims

[Leonana]

Originally Posted by hch

Thanks for the link: I noticed that even without writing to exactly the same audience, without drawing from the same sources (probably), and without sharing quite the same goals, her general recommendation resembles an old article recommending a schedule for athletes in a particular sport. Both include a certain amount of relatively infrequent interval training and some lower intensity.

I also like other things there, like a note on the importance of strength, a note on the importance of rest and recovery, the idea that cortisol is not some monster that must be avoided altogether, and reminders that we can be flexible with what we do depending on the needs of our bodies.

I agree. Jessica’s posts generally seem to be common sense information.

[prettyinpink]

Originally Posted by hch

and reminders that we can be flexible with what we do depending on the needs of our bodies.

Yes, very important reminder.

Having had some extra time recently, and reading and listening more on this topic, I’m reminded that I am just not obsessed with “maximizing longevity” the way some of the influencers in this space are. They jump on one thing after another, and frequently change what they do based on what seems to me to be very preliminary research.

IOW, I am not sure they know what they are doing that much better than the rest of us regular exercisers who are at least semi-interested in fitness, but not to an obsessive degree. My self-experiment feels a little excessive to me, even though it’s basically a rotation, but these people are on another level.

And I don’t think any of us need to be that way to be healthy.
While it is kind of their job, I guess, to worry that much about their VO2max, continuous glucose monitoring (for non-diabetics!), and lactate levels with each workout, or doing piles of extra supplements and unproven cancer screenings, I would have to do some serious self-examination if I was that focused on all these numbers as a non-athlete. But that’s just me. I mean, on a recent podcast, they were talking about whether continuous lactate monitoring for personal use during a workout would be available— and to my surprise, they were not joking.

[TracyQ]

Originally Posted by prettyinpink

This could be a helpful resource for anyone interested in trying to boost fitness with HIIT. I think it’s from the group that came up with the 4x4 protocol

https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/advice

They have an explanatory video, an FAQ, a written 7-week starter plan, and a 7-week follow-up plan. The starter plan is a rev-up to doing the 4x4 plus some LISS and bodyweight strength training. The follow-up has 4x4, some other HIIT protocols, LISS, and some strength.

Of course I’m rethinking my own plan now. They say once per week is good for maintaining cardiovascular fitness, 2-3 times per week for improvement. Presumably non-exercisers would benefit from even beginning once per week.

So it looks like I might be making better friends with my interval timing apps for twice per week for my experiment. I’m going to try one of those YouTube videos first and take another look at Cardio Coach; I don’t own any of those.

Adding this link from the same group, for an estimate of maximal heart rate (thanks again, Rhonda Patrick!). You do not have to share an email to get the results. A link at the end can take you to the above site, afterwards. http://Worldfitnesslevel.org

I answered the questions on the website you linked and got my numbers. I’m 60 and it said I have the fitness of a 39 year old. I guess I should be happy with that?

So I tried both Tracy Steen 4x4 workouts this week, one Sunday and one today. I really like them. This was my first time working out with Tracy. She has an extensive library and I also did a really great 20-minute joint mobility warm up I found in her selection and an excellent upper body workout.

I found the 4x4 workouts to be very doable. I think I expected them to be harder. The first 3 minutes of the work intervals I was working very hard but keeping up with the high impact. The fourth minute was really challenging and I did some low impact and some really spazzy moves. LOL

I use a Fitbit to track but I’m not going to get too caught up in the numbers. When I was younger I would let the numbers run my life and ruin my joy.

I’m not as obsessed with longevity either but do find it a topic of interest.

[prettyinpink]

Originally Posted by TracyQ

I answered the questions on the website you linked and got my numbers. I’m 60 and it said I have the fitness of a 39 year old. I guess I should be happy with that?

So I tried both Tracy Steen 4x4 workouts this week, one Sunday and one today. I really like them. This was my first time working out with Tracy. She has an extensive library and I also did a really great 20-minute joint mobility warm up I found in her selection and an excellent upper body workout.

I found the 4x4 workouts to be very doable. I think I expected them to be harder. The first 3 minutes of the work intervals I was working very hard but keeping up with the high impact. The fourth minute was really challenging and I did some low impact and some really spazzy moves. LOL

I use a Fitbit to track but I’m not going to get too caught up in the numbers. When I was younger I would let the numbers run my life and ruin my joy.

I’m not as obsessed with longevity either but do find it a topic of interest.

I’m glad to hear the Tracy Steen workouts are pretty good. I will definitely check out her other content, too. I’m especially interested in mobility routines.

I did my first 4x4 as a walk/run, and also found it quite doable, and not that much harder than what I had already been doing with walks/sprints sometimes, but much more structured. So the difference for me was that the last interval, and especially the last minute and a half, was a struggle. I paid careful attention to keep my heart rate above 85% on the intervals, and found my usual sense of what is “hard enough but not too hard to complete” was pretty good. The structure of the 4 minutes did make me push myself for a little longer on the last three intervals than I typically would have.

I’m not getting my real VO2 Max tested; I also went by what my watch says, which is exactly the same as what my chest strap says, and I think corresponds to what that quiz gave me. I’m guessing they all use the same calculation based on the parameters they all have, including resting heart rate. I don’t know how accurate that is, but I’m just looking to see if there will be a difference after more HIIT. And mine is pretty good for my age, too, so I don’t know if I will see any difference or not.

The other HIITs since I started this thread were much shorter intervals. And now that I am paying closer attention to getting my HR into the right zone with these, I noticed that the shorter the intervals are, the harder it is to get HR high enough early on in video workouts. Also video workouts tend to use a lot of plyo moves and up-down to raise the heart rate, so what I noticed so far is that sometimes my muscles and joints get cranky with constant plyo before my heart rate is getting maxed out. So I’m thinking that short intervals work better for cardio machines, or outdoor running, at least for me. I think bike or rower might be best for me; I don’t like dealing with the treadmill for intervals at all.

[prettyinpink]

I got Sims’s book Next Level, directed to peri- and post-menopausal women, and am almost through it.

After talking about health influencers and longevity discussions earlier, I should say that Sims isn’t stressing longevity benefits for her ideas. She also doesn’t spend a lot of time focusing on increasing personal VO2Max, the way some others do. Her message is about tweaking nutrition, training, and sometimes supplements, for active women in all phases of life. Her client examples in the book are all already very active with endurance sports, or at least a lot of endurance exercise, and primarily in their 40’s and 50’s.

The chapter that was most new to me and most interesting was on hydration, which was the focus of her PhD. thesis and some of her consulting work.

There are a few statements in the book that I think are not quite right, which does make me wonder about some of the other sciencey things she says, where it would be much harder to know if there are inaccuracies. There are a few charts she includes that don’t have units that make sense out of the context of the studies they come from, and she doesn’t explain.

But on the original topic of the thread, older women in particular needing to focus on HIIT over “slower” longer cardio, I don’t think she supported her assertions. She says we should do HIIT, specifically the more intense, shorter interval, “all-out” versions called Sprint Interval Training (SIT) in the literature, because compared to lower intensity cardio, it will help with body composition changes that occur with menopause, improve insulin sensitivity, and “can make you smarter.”

However, is that true in women who are already quite active and fit? This book isn’t showing me that.

She gives references and discusses a few of them, all found online. They are all short-term studies, one only in sedentary men, others including sedentary and/or obese women, some with health conditions like type 2 diabetes. One she cited that did look at pre— and post-menopausal women actually found the opposite of what she asserts: that HIIT effects for weight and abdominal fat mass, compared with moderate cardio, were only better in the pre-menopausal women.

The comment about brain health, echoed by Rhonda Patrick in some of her talks, seems to be based on preliminary studies and scans. The Generation 100 group in Norway, linked above, on people randomized to do supervised HIIT, moderate cardio, or a control group given standard fitness guidelines, for 5 years in their 70’s and producing many research papers, didn’t show differences in cognition for women. Results on brain studies in the group were mixed (lots of links here https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/generation100#results) but one paper suggested that MICT (similar to what we call LISS cardio) might be better than HIIT for brain health for the elderly. So there’s nothing wrong with hoping that doing HIIT in our 50’s or before will stave off dementia or “make us smarter,” but I think that’s all it is until there is more hard evidence in real people.

I think someone who does a lot of running or other cardio and doesn’t strength train already, and is having some perimenopausal symptoms, might get a lot out of this book. Even if we leave the idea that all women of a certain age should be doing sprint interval training, there are lots of ideas about hydration, meal timing, and tweaking weekly workout plans to minimize fatigue and other symptoms that are based on her experience and might work well for some. She stresses lifting heavy is important for muscle mass and bone. Not against hormone replacement but doesn’t think it should be the go-to for every issue women have.

[prettyinpink]

I thought this podcast on HIIT with Dr. Martin Gibala was excellent. He is a professor who has conducted HIIT studies. He was on with Rhonda Patrick and Michael Moseley, and probably others.

https://www.artofmanliness.com/healt...martin-gibala/

It also spelled out well why HIIT is a good choice for me right now: if you have less time to do conditioning, more of it should be higher intensity. If and when I go through periods where I regularly have 90 minutes for LISS and enjoy that, there’s not a need to do intervals if I don’t want to.

He addresses differences between men and women with HIIT about halfway through. He thinks differences are small and might be more about individual differences than anything based on gender.

[Leonana]

Originally Posted by prettyinpink

I thought this podcast on HIIT with Dr. Martin Gibala was excellent. He is a professor who has conducted HIIT studies. He was on with Rhonda Patrick and Michael Moseley, and probably others.

https://www.artofmanliness.com/healt...martin-gibala/

It also spelled out well why HIIT is a good choice for me right now: if you have less time to do conditioning, more of it should be higher intensity. If and when I go through periods where I regularly have 90 minutes for LISS and enjoy that, there’s not a need to do intervals if I don’t want to.

That’s good to know. My part time job is moderate walking, and I can’t do high impact. That makes HIIT harder for me to accomplish.

[prettyinpink]

Regular non-exercise movement is important, too.

Doing what we can do and can be consistent with has to come first before whatever the experts say.

I agree it’s a little harder to do high intensity without impact, even being older, if we are somewhat fit. I’m not sure I can keep the higher impact up along with the heavier lifting. That’s where a bike could be good, but not everyone can have a bike or access to one. Hill walking or stair climbing could also work. Today I did a Kat Gates-Buettner step HIIT workout from this list that was fun. Some impact, but the step provided most of the added work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T0z...FpOAkRA0BUhSr2

There are a few that say no jumping, but I have not tried them yet.

[Leonana]

I would love to have an exercise bike again. I have a spot for it in our spare bedroom once we clean it out. At the moment it’s a catch all for dh’s tools while he remodels our master bath.

I forgot about step. Thanks for the reminder and the link.

[laurawd]

Originally Posted by prettyinpink

I got Sims’s book Next Level, directed to peri- and post-menopausal women, and am almost through it.

After talking about health influencers and longevity discussions earlier, I should say that Sims isn’t stressing longevity benefits for her ideas. She also doesn’t spend a lot of time focusing on increasing personal VO2Max, the way some others do. Her message is about tweaking nutrition, training, and sometimes supplements, for active women in all phases of life. Her client examples in the book are all already very active with endurance sports, or at least a lot of endurance exercise, and primarily in their 40’s and 50’s.

The chapter that was most new to me and most interesting was on hydration, which was the focus of her PhD. thesis and some of her consulting work.

There are a few statements in the book that I think are not quite right, which does make me wonder about some of the other sciencey things she says, where it would be much harder to know if there are inaccuracies. There are a few charts she includes that don’t have units that make sense out of the context of the studies they come from, and she doesn’t explain.

But on the original topic of the thread, older women in particular needing to focus on HIIT over “slower” longer cardio, I don’t think she supported her assertions. She says we should do HIIT, specifically the more intense, shorter interval, “all-out” versions called Sprint Interval Training (SIT) in the literature, because compared to lower intensity cardio, it will help with body composition changes that occur with menopause, improve insulin sensitivity, and “can make you smarter.”

However, is that true in women who are already quite active and fit? This book isn’t showing me that.

She gives references and discusses a few of them, all found online. They are all short-term studies, one only in sedentary men, others including sedentary and/or obese women, some with health conditions like type 2 diabetes. One she cited that did look at pre— and post-menopausal women actually found the opposite of what she asserts: that HIIT effects for weight and abdominal fat mass, compared with moderate cardio, were only better in the pre-menopausal women.

The comment about brain health, echoed by Rhonda Patrick in some of her talks, seems to be based on preliminary studies and scans. The Generation 100 group in Norway, linked above, on people randomized to do supervised HIIT, moderate cardio, or a control group given standard fitness guidelines, for 5 years in their 70’s and producing many research papers, didn’t show differences in cognition for women. Results on brain studies in the group were mixed (lots of links here https://www.ntnu.edu/cerg/generation100#results) but one paper suggested that MICT (similar to what we call LISS cardio) might be better than HIIT for brain health for the elderly. So there’s nothing wrong with hoping that doing HIIT in our 50’s or before will stave off dementia or “make us smarter,” but I think that’s all it is until there is more hard evidence in real people.

I think someone who does a lot of running or other cardio and doesn’t strength train already, and is having some perimenopausal symptoms, might get a lot out of this book. Even if we leave the idea that all women of a certain age should be doing sprint interval training, there are lots of ideas about hydration, meal timing, and tweaking weekly workout plans to minimize fatigue and other symptoms that are based on her experience and might work well for some. She stresses lifting heavy is important for muscle mass and bone. Not against hormone replacement but doesn’t think it should be the go-to for every issue women have.

THANK YOU for your post. Lots of value added here!