You’ve probably heard the phrase “Work smarter, not harder,” but if your goal is to decrease body fat, improve your aerobic capacity, gain muscle strength, and improve your overall quality of life, working harder IS smarter. Read on for more on how to work harder, in a smart way, to enhance your fitness efforts.

Why focus on intensity?

If your fitness goal is to improve your overall athletic performance, achieving this goal requires some subset of improved distance, speed, or power. What if we told you that most of your efforts in all three of these domains can be considerably enhanced with an increase in the intensity of your workout? High intensity interval training (HIIT) has grown in popularity over the past decade, but it’s worth noting that increasing intensity in your athletic effort does not only refer to a specific type of workout class. Increasing intensity can take lots of forms, but generally, it includes putting your body under some intentional physical stress.

VO2 Max

Evidence consistently shows that aerobic capacity (VO2 Max), or the ability to deliver oxygen to the body and utilize it, is the strongest predictor of all-cause mortality, future cardiovascular risks, and future health in general. Despite moderate intensity continuous training (MICT) being the gold standard of intervention for people with cardiac diseases, HIIT has been shown to be a more efficient method to improve VO2 Max. In fact, research shows that HIIT workouts improve not only VO2 Max, but also skeletal muscle strength and function; vascular, cardiac and autonomic nervous system function; and respiration and exercise capacity, better than MICT. HIIT can also provide improved quality of life, and reduce cardiac risk factors and inflammation in the body.

But I get my 10,000 steps, isn’t that good?

Measures such as achieving 10,000 steps a day are great motivational standards that get people up and moving, but they don’t necessarily reflect the body’s response to activity. Measuring heart rate and/or perceived exertion are more personalized and accurate ways to track and measure the body’s response to activity and intensity in particular – regardless of activity type!  If you are walking, keep it up – but try to find a way to increase your heart rate at some point during that walk. An easy way to track this is the “talk test,” if you’re walking and/or exercising and you’re able to talk while doing it, you may want to ramp up the intensity.

What else can I do to vary my workout intensity?

So far, we’ve focused on cardiovascular indicators of intensity, but intensity can also mean putting our muscles and bones under a little more intentional stress. For example, a study in 2018 by Watson et al. that examined different approaches to performing barbell squats and deadlifts found that high intensity resistance and impact training (< 80% of their 1 repetition maximum (1RM)) improved bone mineral density in women with osteopenia and osteoporosis when compared to low intensity resistance training (≤ 60% of their 1RM). To be clear, strength training at higher intensities, i.e., increased sets and repetitions with little to no rest in between exercises, does have cardiovascular benefit.

Maybe you love to run, but you have settled into a groove of a certain pace or a certain duration, or even a certain route. According to the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training you want to trade volume and frequency for intensity, which in turn improves aerobic capacity (VO2 Max), lactate threshold, running economy, and running speed. A meta-analysis that examined the impact of HIIT vs. MICT in the context of running found that HIIT was more effective at decreasing total body fat mass, as well as abdominal and visceral fat mass, and was more time-efficient than MICT (Maillard et al., 2018). 

If you are curious about what this might look like, the Maillard study included work that used running protocols that spanned 4 sets of 4 minutes of high intensity to 3 minutes of active recovery; to 60 sets of 8 seconds of high intensity to 12 seconds of active recovery. If you feel like you need some help in programming your fitness regime to increase intensity, therapists at Beacon Physical Therapy are happy to be your guide.

At Beacon Physical Therapy, we support our patients in leading a healthy life and establishing a healthy lifestyle. We’d love to meet you and get you back to doing what you love.