The Tim Ferriss Show - #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala

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Starting point is 00:03:13 every possible discipline to tease out the details that you can use and apply to your own life. This episode, we have a scientist who is also incredibly good at teaching. Dr. Martin Gabala, or Martin Gabala, PhD, is a professor and chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His research on the physiological and health benefits of high-intensity interval training, or HIT, has attracted incredible scientific attention and worldwide media coverage. If you recognize the name, there are many reasons you might, because he's published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles. He has been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal. He also appeared seven years ago in The 4-Hour Body, because I followed his research and found it fascinating.

Starting point is 00:04:03 He is frequently invited to speak at international scientific meetings and has received multiple awards for teaching excellence, the reasons for which I think will become incredibly clear as you listen to this episode. He is the co-author of the brand new book, The One Minute Workout. And that may sound ridiculous, but by the end of this episode, you will not think it's ridiculous. You will think that it is entirely scientifically supported. And we dig into some exact protocols that you can test yourself to take this for a test drive. So please enjoy my conversation with Marty Gabala. And we do get into the weeds. So if you're having trouble grasping something, bear with us for 30 seconds, and we will come out the other side and end up somewhere else that is perhaps more easily

Starting point is 00:04:48 digested. But it is a fun conversation. I had a blast, and it is extremely applicable and practical. So please enjoy. Marty, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tim. We were chatting very briefly via Skype video just a few moments ago, and it was really nice to pair a face with the name because I have wondered, A, who is this guy? And because I've read your name so many times and written your name in the 4-Hour Body, among other places, what does he look like? And then, B, how does he pronounce his last name?

Starting point is 00:05:31 We have addressed both of those this morning, and I'm very happy about that. Where are you sitting? Just to place some context for people. Sure. I'm at my desk in my office at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. And again, we were chatting offline. There's been a water main break out front. So in Fahrenheit, it's about 50 degrees in my office today, which is pretty chilly. Well, you know, cold exposure is all the rage these days. Although I suppose if you're in Canada, it gets old pretty quick. Which department are you part of? I'm in a department of kinesiology in a faculty of science. And could you just explain for people who may not know what falls under the purview of physiology or what is physiology?

Starting point is 00:06:20 Sure. Physiology is basically how the body works, so how the systems act in an integrative manner. And so one of the fascinating things about exercise is it stresses the body in unique and different ways. And so it makes it a really, for me, an interesting topic to study. So this morning before I spoke with you, I teach a fourth year course called the Integrative Physiology of Human Performance. And so in that course, we talk about how the body's systems come together I teach a fourth year course called the integrative physiology of human performance. And so in that course, we talk about how the body's systems come together to meet the demand of exercise. So the cardiovascular system, the muscle system. And for me, that's what makes it a really interesting topic. In that class, since you brought it up, what do students find most exciting or fascinating as part of that curriculum? And what do students find most exciting or fascinating as part of that curriculum?

Starting point is 00:07:06 And what do they find most counterintuitive or difficult? I think a lot of the, one of the main things they like is what regulates the performance of elite athletes or simply put what makes elite athletes great. And so a lot of students who come into kinesiology, not all of them, but a lot have a background in exercise. They're interested in sport. And so what I try to do in that course is, if you will, trick them a little bit or cajole them into learning a bit more about how the body's regulated. So we talk a little biochemistry, we talk a little physiology, so that they have a really good understanding of how the body works. And we often present that

Starting point is 00:07:53 using elite athletes as an example, because it's a prism that can often ground them. You know, another thing that I'll try to do in that class is all of the students have to perform a VO2 max test on each other and they have to feel what it is like to do a VO2 max test. So when we talk about an athlete pushing out a thousand watts, for example, or fifteen hundred watts or holding four hundred watts as a pace on a bike, they know what it's like to either come close to that for a couple of seconds. And I think it really helps to either come close to that for a couple of seconds. And I think it really helps to put it in context a little bit. And, but bottom line is they have an appreciation for elite athletes. And then we talk about the underlying physiology. So I have a few questions related to that. The first is a definition question just for people listening, because I think it'll come up a few times. Can you define VO2 max? And then

Starting point is 00:08:45 can you tell people if it is malleable and if so, how malleable or improvable it is? Sure. So VO2 max or maximal oxygen uptake, also known as maximal aerobic capacity, is the highest rate at which the body can take up and use oxygen. And that's typically during heavy exercise. So how we would test it, have an individual do progressively higher workloads that could be on a bike, that could be on a treadmill. And at some point, your body's going to reach its maximal capacity to use oxygen. That's important if you're an athlete, but it's equally important for health. And so when people talk about cardio fitness, what you're really talking about is your VO2 max. And

Starting point is 00:09:31 it reflects the underlying ability of the cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, so your heart, your lungs, your blood vessels, to deliver oxygen to working muscles and the ability of the muscles to use that oxygen to produce energy. So literally to burn fats and carbohydrates to produce fuel. So we say it's, if you're going to be an elite endurance athlete, a high VO2 max is necessary, but not sufficient for success because obviously there's lots of other factors involved, but the underlying physiology is the same. And so it's also a really important parameter for your health. And is it something, is it a fixed metric the way people might think

Starting point is 00:10:14 of height or is it something that can be improved or meaningfully improved? No, it's definitely something that can be meaningfully improved. Again, we talk about this in my class. If you want to be an elite endurance athlete, we hear the phrase, pick your parents properly. And that's true because in some ways, it's a bit like a mortgage. There's a fixed element and there's a variable element. And so the fixed element is determined by things like the genetic capacity for your heart size, for example. But there's definitely a highly variable element. And we know that because it can respond to training as well as detraining. So, you know, a typical or average person, if they do traditional endurance training for a couple of months, they might be able to boost their VO2 max by 20%.

Starting point is 00:11:13 But it's a highly individual value or parameter as well. And we know some people, their value doesn't change very much, even though they do highly structured training, whereas other people, they can change it by up to 100%. People would be familiar with the term hard gainers. There's some hard gainers when it comes to VO2 max as well. But fortunately, it's a relatively small percentage. And to answer your question, it's highly malleable in most individuals. I was chatting with Peter Diamandis not too long ago, a friend of mine. He's the chairman of the XPRIZE and involved in many different companies. And he is very good friends with Ray Kurzweil. They co-founded Singularity University together, which is, I think it is still hosted at the NASA Ames Center

Starting point is 00:11:57 in Mountain View, California. And I remember he mentioned to me at one point that at least two things, but two that really jumped out of the data that correlated to longevity or maximal lifespan were flossing and high VO2 max. And he said, I'll be the first person to admit that I think flossing might be correlation and not causation. It could be that people who are anal retentive enough and disciplined enough to floss on a daily basis also are disciplined enough to do other things on a daily basis to contribute. On the VO2 max point, if you had to speculate or maybe you don't have to speculate, do you think that that is causative or correlative with the high VO2 max and extended lifespan? I think it's causative for sure. And there's a lot of data out there, I think, that would support that. Obviously, it's tough to do a proper randomized clinical trial to look at something. To death with humans? Yeah. Hard to get the IRB approval for that. Well, what we know, if you look at, for example, mortality risk of risk of dying from all causes, if individuals, there's a concept called a MET or a metabolic equivalent, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

Starting point is 00:13:12 Some of your listeners may be familiar with that, but it's essentially a unit of measurement for VO2 max. And individuals who have a higher, a one MET higher value, that translates into about a 13% lower risk of dying from all causes. Obviously, that's correlational data, but it's based on fairly strong epidemiological evidence. You might also be familiar, just a couple of weeks ago, there was a paper in JAMA, which was calling for VO2 max or fitness, cardiorespiratory fitness, to be a vital sign. So it's something that we should measure in the doctor's office, just like we measure weight and height and things like blood sugar. The problem, of course, is that it takes some time to properly measure VO2 max accurately. And obviously that's not feasible in a lot of physicians' offices, but there are now

Starting point is 00:14:05 some very good online calculators that can give individuals a sense of what their value is. How do they approximate that online? I'm very curious. I've never taken one of these myself. I have had the great joy of having the garden hose stuck in my mouth and my nose clipped while I run on a treadmill. I have done that before, but I can see why a lot of doctor's offices would not be super keen to have that as part of their 11 minutes with their patient. How do they try to infer VO2 max from online inputs? Yeah, I've just seen this recently and actually put my own data in to see how well or how accurate I thought it was. And it was reasonable. It asks things like your age,

Starting point is 00:14:52 your sex, your things like that, some activities on or your type of activity that you habitually do. And it does ask for a measure of resting heart rate. And so based, I assume, on some parameters that relate to your habitual fitness level and also your resting heart rate, those are probably two of the main drivers. Obviously, I don't know everything that goes into the algorithm, but that's typically what it's based on. And I think probably these online calculators, the greatest benefit, even if there's an absolute error in the number, you would hope that it's a fairly reproducible number. So if you do some training and your resting heart rate is lower, presumably the value that would predict for your VO2 max would be higher. But that's what it's based on.

Starting point is 00:15:40 But as you say, having a VO2 max test measured directly is the gold standard. But there's also some reasonable ways to estimate it based on running speed over a set distance or heart rate response to submaximal exercise. So I think it's fairly easy. Maybe we can leave folks with some tips on the online aspect of this interview with ways that they can get a sense of their fitness on their own. For sure. And you said something I want to underscore for folks because it's so important.

Starting point is 00:16:10 Many of these tools, one could argue even most of these tools, they're not 100% accurate in an absolute sense. But as long as they're consistently inaccurate, you can trend properly, right? Which is also why it's so important if people are trying to gauge body fat, which is notoriously error prone for a host of different reasons that they're using the same tool. And if they're using a practitioner or some type of clinician, they're using the same practitioner clinician so that at the very least they're comparing apples to apples so they can trend properly. And look at how an intervention like the training that we'll be talking about, I'm sure, affects the numbers that they're putting in. Agreed. That's an excellent point. If you're looking at something like bioelectrical impedance,

Starting point is 00:17:00 for example, to measure body fat percentage. There's some concerns around the absolute validity of that test, but I think when you use the same test repeatedly over time, it gives you a good sense, as you say, to know whether you're trending positive or trending negative, and that's the important thing. When did you do your first studies or begin researching sprints or interval training, and what catalyzed that? It would be around 2003, 2004. And believe it or not, it stemmed in large part from that course that we mentioned at the outset of the interview. So I've taught this course, integrative physiology of human performance for quite a while now. I think this is the 16th or 17th version of it. And it does

Starting point is 00:17:47 go back to that idea of students were interested in the training programs of elite athletes. And they were often surprised by the fact that elite endurance athletes through the course of history surprisingly used interval training, either because they were quite time limited or because they really wanted to push their overall training volumes, but often it related to the notion of time efficiency. You know, one of the classic examples would be Roger Bannister. When he was training for the assault on the four-minute mile, he was a very busy medical student who had about a half an hour at lunch to train, and he would repeat short intervals around the track at a very high tempo. So that led to my initial interest in the topic, and then that led to some very simple early designs around some studies around either how low can you go? So, you know, a theme through my research has been time efficiency

Starting point is 00:18:46 of exercise and definitely this idea of how low can you go, both in terms of boosting performance if you're an athlete, but increasingly in terms of boosting health if you're an average individual or someone with metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes, for example. You've had a number of influences and I'd love to just place these on a timeline as well, because it's such a fascinating set of research that you have and how it has evolved over time. Could you talk a little bit about Richard Metcalf and Tabata? Yes, of course. And a point I would make is that we don't know what we don't know. And so when I first got into that, you know, we don't know what we don't know. And so when I first got into this field, obviously, we're very interested in the topic. But over time,

Starting point is 00:19:30 I've definitely developed an appreciation, both for the scientific history of interval training, which goes back to at least the late 1950s, and probably before that, and the athletic history, which certainly dates to the turn of the century. But we were influenced, of course, by some of the work that Tabata had done. You know, he's a classic paper from the mid-1990s that led to Tabata-style training. And there were, of course, we're not working in a vacuum. We've been influenced by other researchers as well. You mentioned Richard Metcalf, and there's some other researchers working with him in the UK who have had this similar type question, and that's this idea of how low can you go. And so Richard and some others had done a scientific study where they were looking at just two bursts of interval training lasting only 15 to 20 seconds and showing

Starting point is 00:20:23 that if subjects did that a couple of times a week for six weeks, they could boost their VO2 max. And so that was influential in terms of our research and it led the design of what we call the quote-unquote one-minute protocol or the one-minute workout, which of course is a teaser headline. It's not really a minute start to finish when you build in recovery and a short warm-up and cool cool down. But it's all variations on this theme that short, hard bursts of exercise can be extremely effective and extremely time efficient in order to boost performance and boost health. And we're going to talk plenty about that. I want to come back to Tabata for a second and ask you a question or a few questions that were sent to me by a friend

Starting point is 00:21:07 of mine who's an MD, very accomplished athlete, and a huge fan of interval training. His first question, and maybe before we actually get to this question, could you define for people what the Tabata protocol is? Yeah. So the classic Tabata protocol is eight repeats of a cycle that involves 20 seconds of effort and 10 seconds of rest. So you repeat that eight times. And so start to finish the workout is four minutes in duration. The original classic study that was described, uh, was done on a bicycle. So bicycle exercise at an intensity of around 170% of VO2 max. And people might have a workload, for example, of 300 watts, and that's sufficient to elicit your VO2 max, but you could work at above that value or 170% of that value for very short periods of time. But that's the classic Tabata protocol. And as I say, it was described on a bike, although over time, it's probably more well-known to most of your listeners for more calisthenic-type

Starting point is 00:22:26 style training, burpees, mountain climbers, air squats, things like that, although the original protocol was described for a bicycle. Thank you. And the first question from this friend of mine is, is Tabata especially magical or have the data been over-interpreted? And keep in mind, this is someone who is part of the choir, so to speak, not necessarily for Tabata, but it's been so widely discussed and so widely, I would imagine, maybe misinterpreted. But is the Tabata protocol particularly magical or have the data been over-interpreted in any way? I don't think it's particularly magical. I think Tabata is an example and obviously a well-known example of the concept that we were talking about. And that's this idea that short,

Starting point is 00:23:16 hard bursts of exercise can be extremely effective. And so the original Tabata protocol, the main outcome measure was maximal aerobic capacity or VO2 max. And so Tabata showed that short, hard intervals on the bike, as we've described, could be effective for boosting VO2 max. They didn't perform muscle biopsies, for example. There wasn't a lot of underlying physiological measurements performed. And I think that's one of the additions to the scientific literature of our work, as well as other researchers, that they've looked more mechanistically at what's happening. So for example, we've been very interested in short, hard bursts of exercise, improving muscle health and boosting things like mitochondrial content in your muscles. I think there has been some overstatement in the fact that Tabata is

Starting point is 00:24:06 viewed with almost these magical properties. When it comes to Tabata style training that I think most people think of, and that's body weight style intervals, there's surprisingly less scientific evidence that speaks directly to that. There's really only a handful of studies that have looked at Tabata style body weights and the effect on strength and maximal aerobic capacity. That being said, those studies have shown that it's a very efficient way to train. And so I think of it as a very good middle ground. You know, the benefit in aerobic capacity that you'll see might not be as great as if you do large amounts of other traditional endurance style training. And obviously the improvements that you have in strength and hypertrophy are not going to be like heavy resistance exercise. But again, from a time efficiency aspect,

Starting point is 00:24:54 body weight style intervals provide a lot of bang for your buck. And I think that also perhaps what contributes to the smaller data set when it relates to the body weight training is that what strikes me as harder to measure in some respects. with a lot more precision if you want to manage that and really look at how the inputs affect the outputs or how different degrees of, say, super maximal effort affects the outcomes. But it would strike me as a lot more difficult when you're doing calisthenic type exercise in a research setting, at least. You make a really good point. People ask us all the time, why is most of our research done on the bike and how does it translate to other types of activity? And the main reason is, as you say, we can quantify things like work and power very accurately. And so that enhances the

Starting point is 00:25:55 scientific rigor of the study in terms of our ability to control the stimulus. And then we're obviously often looking at very specific physiological markers that require us to perform invasive measurements. Whereas if you're just doing a set of burpees, for example, it's a little bit more challenging to precisely control the stimulus. And so that sometimes can go to the impact of the study, if you will. And there I'm talking the scientific impact because I have to worry about things like where I publish my papers and journal impact factors and things like that. But ironically, you know, a lot of the public doesn't care about an impact factor. They just want to know if I do this type of training, will that benefit me? So there's sometimes an inherent tension there between the scientific impact of a work and really the

Starting point is 00:26:43 translatability of a work and answering questions that people actually want to know about. Yeah. And let's talk about the scientific a little bit more because I think it's easy for people who have had no experience in academia or research to talk about people in their ivory towers and doing all this theoretical this, that, and the other thing that doesn't translate without recognizing the importance of properly executed scientific method if you want your data to be persuasive and defensible, which you really need first and foremost before you can prescribe some type of variant

Starting point is 00:27:24 to be applied in the real world with some degree of confidence. But that's not the question I'm going to ask or related to the question. What I wanted to ask you is, in your own research as it relates to interval training, what was the first study that surprised you in some way because of your forming hypotheses beforehand, right? You have a lot of experience with physiologies and exposure to interval training. Was there a particular study that sticks out for you as surprising even to you? Yes. Our first study actually was one of our most impactful. And I was influenced by a number of scientific papers, of course, but one of the most interesting for me was this group in

Starting point is 00:28:15 Europe had taken two groups of subjects and they applied the same training stimulus to both groups. And the training stimulus involved 14 consecutive days of hard workouts. One group did them every day consecutively for two weeks, and one group did them every couple of days over a period of six weeks. So the training stimulus is the same, and really all that was different was obviously one group was getting recovery days. At the end of the study period, the physiological adaptations between the groups were virtually identical. So measuring specific changes in their muscles or how much an enzyme level went up. But the performance was only better in the group that got recovery days.

Starting point is 00:29:12 And I'm sure your audience is listening going, well, duh, that sort of makes sense. But it hammered home for me this idea that recovery was important. And so our first question was, well, what if we had people only do two weeks of interval training or the period of measurement is only over two weeks, but we give them those recovery days. And so that led to our initial study where we had people do six sessions of interval training over 14 days. And what we measured in that study, the two major outcomes was, was endurance performance. So basically time to fatigue on an exercise bike, how long can you ride a bike until you're exhausted? And the amazing thing was that subjects endurance capacity increased by a hundred percent on average. So basically you could double endurance capacity with six sessions of interval exercise. And we're talking this short, hard sprint type exercise. So the type of intervals that people were doing only required them to do two to three

Starting point is 00:30:06 minutes of very heavy exercise every couple of days. And we backed that up with some physiological markers. We took biopsies from the subject's legs and we measured an important enzyme that relates to how well the body uses oxygen to burn fuels to produce energy. And we saw that that enzyme increased by about 35% if I recall. What was that enzyme? It's an enzyme called citrate synthase. It's arguably the most commonly measured enzyme in exercise physiology. It's a marker of the Krebs cycle or the TCA cycle. And it correlates quite well with the overall amount of mitochondria that a subject has in their legs. So again, people have a pretty good sense of cardio health and what that means, the ability of your heart to pump blood and deliver oxygen. Citrate synthase

Starting point is 00:30:58 or mitochondrial content is a pretty good marker of muscle health, how well your body can utilize the oxygen that gets delivered to produce energy. It's also important for things like predicting your risk for diabetes. If you have a higher citrate synthase content in your muscles, your risk for developing type 2 diabetes tends to be lower. But the short answer is that when people did these six sessions of intervals over two weeks, they doubled their endurance capacity and they markedly increased the amount of this enzyme in their muscle. And that's where I really sat back and went, wow, maybe we're onto something here. And, you know, as a cautious

Starting point is 00:31:35 scientist, the first thing you do is you tell your grad students, make all those measurements again, show me that the data are reproducible. Because when we first published that study, I don't want to say there was opposition, but there was skepticism to be sure. And certainly we were happy as more research studies were conducted, both in our own lab and around the world, verifying some of these initial findings. Quick question on methodology, because I've always been very curious about this. I've been a test subject in a number of different experiments that were not designed by the amateur professional dilettante,

Starting point is 00:32:11 which I know is a contradiction in terms, Tim Ferriss, but actual legitimate scientists at places like Stanford. I was part of a body cooling experiment, or the intervention was body cooling using a vacuum and a glove of all things looking at heat exhaustion and marching in saunas it was it was a disaster in terms of just subjective experience it was pretty miserable but i've i've i've been a participant in a number of different labs and I'd be, I'd love to know in your lab, what is the right way to identify when someone on a bike has ridden to exhaustion? How do you define that? Because of course, if you have rats, a lot easier, right? And this is not something I've

Starting point is 00:33:00 personally done, but I know they'll do swim tests. And to exhaustion means the rat basically doesn't necessarily drown because it probably doesn't die or it might, but they put them in a bucket and let them swim until they can't swim anymore. Not as easy to get approvals to do that with, say, college students or other human subjects. How do you define and determine when someone has ridden to exhaustion? So we would measure or define fatigue as a point at which subjects are unable to maintain the power output. So if we're going to have you ride at 200 watts, you could ride at 200 watts for a certain period of time. And then literally you get to the point where you're unable to turn the pedals. And so what typically happens is you'll see cadence fall. So if someone's maintaining 90 revolutions per minute, obviously the force per revolution

Starting point is 00:33:53 or the load per revolution will seem a little bit lighter than if they're only riding at 50 RPM. So we use bikes that are electrically braked cyclergometers so that we know regardless of how fast the subject is turning the pedals, the workload is the same at 200 watts. And so as people approach fatigue or exhaustion, they literally can't turn the pedals. And for us, it's usually defined as their RPMs falling below 40 because that's where the manufacturers will guarantee the workload setting on the bike. But what you find is they tend to hit exhaustion pretty quickly. So it's not very hard to figure out when they have to literally stop. And sometimes we'll use

Starting point is 00:34:37 time to exhaustion tests, but as a colleague, Mark Hargraves will say, there's no Olympic events in time to exhaustion. Typically, typically we do time. That'd be a riveting spectator sport though. Exactly. And so most athletic events are, you need to cover a set distance as fast as possible. And that's why certainly more recently, but often in our studies, we'll use time trials as well, where subjects will have to complete a set amount of work. And we'll say, think of this as a 10 kilometer bicycle race. And as they go through, they're able to see elapsed distance or work done so they can work towards a goal. And again, it more closely simulates normal athletic competition. So you mentioned citrate synthase, which if that's... I remember having a biopsy done in South Africa at Tim Noakes' facility,

Starting point is 00:35:32 who has some really interesting thoughts on central governors and so on. I remember coming in to look at the results, and I'm effectively below the Homer Simpson sedentary line in my citrate synthase in my, I think it was the vastus lateralis, or maybe it was medialis that took it from in the quadricep. But could you talk to, which is obviously something I should address, but could you please describe what mitochondria are and why they're important? And then how, say, citrate synthase relates to mitochondria, if at all? Sure. So mitochondria are often termed the powerhouse of the cell.

Starting point is 00:36:12 They're these specialized organelles or a component of a cell where fuel is converted into energy using oxygen. So obviously the internal processes there are quite complex, but essentially mitochondria suck in fuels like glucose and fats and use oxygen to combust, to burn those fuels in order to produce cellular energy in the form of ATP. If people might be, you know, they may have taken a biology course or read a textbook, and you often see mitochondria presented as these bean-shaped organelles in a two-dimensional image on the page. And certainly what we know now are they're much more like complex networks that run throughout,

Starting point is 00:37:01 in this case, the muscle cells. So they're very impressive structures. And so when you have mitochondrial biogenesis or an increase in mitochondria, it's a bit like an expansion of this intracellular network. So if you imagine a garden hose, it would be a bit like the garden hose growing more tentacles and this network expanding throughout the muscle cell. Mitochondria contain many different enzymes that are involved in this process called oxidative phosphorylation, which is just another name for that process of producing cellular energy. And so a common enzyme that's relatively convenient to measure, because if you're going to try

Starting point is 00:37:46 and assess mitochondria, you need some different markers, and some of these markers are better than others. But citrate synthase is a specific enzyme located inside the mitochondrial compartment or network, and that enzyme is involved in oxidative phosphorylation. And so the measurement of the content of that enzyme provides a pretty good index or marker of the overall mitochondrial network capacity. Got it. So when you are tracking, say, improvement, mitochondrial improvement per se through high

Starting point is 00:38:24 intensity interval training, is citrate synthase the primary marker that you're tracking or are there other markers or for that matter, graphic representations of density of mitochondria or something else that you're looking at closely? We almost always measure citrate synthase because, again, it's a fairly robust and commonly accepted marker of mitochondrial content. Ideally, though, we'll include other measurements as well, either performed in my laboratory or through collaborations with some other scientists, both at McMaster and elsewhere. So typically, we'll measure a suite of enzymes, so not just citrate synthase. We'll measure a suite of enzymes. So not just citrate synthase,

Starting point is 00:39:05 we'll measure a couple of other ones as well. Sometimes we'll measure what's known as mitochondrial respiration. So this is just another way to demonstrate how much oxygen the mitochondria is using. And you can see, for example, an increase in mitochondrial respiration rate after training. And sometimes we'll measure molecular compounds that are signals that mitochondrial biogenesis is taking place or in the process of taking place. So some of our studies, for example, are acute exercise studies. We'll have someone do a single bout of exercise, and then we'll take biopsies in recovery. And we'll say, okay, is the mitochondrial biosynthesis pathways, are these activated? And we'll measure certain proteins that are representative of that. Other times we'll do

Starting point is 00:39:52 training studies and that's where we would commonly measure citrate synthase and some of these other markers to show that these enzymes had in fact either maximal activity or the content had increased owing to the training protocol. So to jump to protocol, or I guess go out to sort of 30,000 foot view a little bit, I remember doing some reading in prep for this conversation and finding a, I guess an assertion, I haven't looked at the data behind it, but that even interval walking in many respects could be considered more, I guess, effective than say steady state walking for catalyzing health improvements. Why is that? Why does this type of oscillation in effort have profound effects and why does it apply to something at a low level of input or output rather like walking all the way up to sprinting? What does interval training do to the body? It's a great question. We can get into some of the details there,

Starting point is 00:41:07 and it's certainly something that keeps me interested as a scientist, you know, trying to figure out the mechanisms at play here. Your question also raises another point that's important, I think, to note, and that's that interval training is almost infinitely variable. And so people have this idea in their head

Starting point is 00:41:23 of what interval training looks like. But for some individuals, interval training is just, if your only exercise is walking around a block, picking up the pace for a couple of light posts and then backing off. And that's gentle interval training. It's just interval walking, as you alluded to. And I would often give that example for more deconditioned individuals. That's what interval training looks like for them. But there is certainly scientific evidence to suggest that that type of training, so just veering up the pace a little bit, is going to be more beneficial than continuous steady state walking. Just to cite one quick example, there's a study out of Denmark that was looking at individuals with type 2 diabetes, and they divided them into one of two groups, one that did steady state walking that elicited about

Starting point is 00:42:09 66% of their maximal heart rate, and the other group did interval walking that the overall average intensity was the same, 66%, but they would just pick up the pace a little bit, maybe go to 70%, and then maybe back off a little bit. And after several months of training, what they found was that the interval walkers, even though the total amount of exercise done was the same, their fitness was improved to a greater extent, they had lost more body fat and their body composition was superior, and their average blood sugar had decreased by a greater amount, even though the total amount of exercise that was done was the same. And so, sorry, I was just going to say that goes

Starting point is 00:42:51 to the question of why. So the lowered fasting glucose being reflective of the greater ability to utilize glucose by, say, mitochondria or muscle in general? Is that the... Yes. Also a greater ability to store it as well. So a question is always, well, if you lower your blood glucose, where does that glucose go? Part of it is probably an enhanced ability to store the glucose inside skeletal muscle, for example, as stored glycogen. We know that training, exercise training, almost of any sort, increases the muscle's ability to take up glucose. So glucose transport capacity increases. And that also is a function of exercise intensity. So when we've done some of our interval training studies in people with type 2 diabetes, we see that there can be marked increases in glucose transport capacity and the amount of glucose transporters that these subjects have in their personally, variations of interval training. You've designed studies

Starting point is 00:44:07 and imposed said regimens on many different subjects. If you had, for instance, a... I'm going to give you a profile and this is out of pure self-interest. So let's just say you had a former competitive athlete with more than a few injuries, but nothing hugely debilitating, maybe a sprained ACL in the past, some issues with plantar fasciitis, et cetera. So not generally going to be looking for any type of sprinting on say flat ground where I might risk tearing a hamstring at the end range or something like that, which has happened before, who's willing to put in some time, but not too much, if it makes sense. I'm not looking for the absolute bare minimum that will elicit a change. I'm looking for the sort of minimal effective dose

Starting point is 00:45:05 that I might experiment with, which would produce hopefully a profound change of some type or improvement over my baseline, which is pretty shitty to be quite frank. I'm not an endurance athlete by any stretch of the imagination and my VO2 max is quite poor might a, a protocol look like for me to, to, to start with? For, I'd probably probe that individual or ask you for example, you know, what are the goals here? You know, are the goals boosting cardiorespiratory fitness for health? Is it more from a performance element? So I guess what is the goal of the exercise training program? Is it,

Starting point is 00:45:45 you know, is it general maintenance of, of health and fitness, uh, in a very busy life and trying to fit that in as best you can? For me, it would be in a generalized sense, improving endurance and VM and VO two max, not for any particular sporting event, but for general application to say, I might go to high, I went to high altitude in Colorado last year for five or six days. And it was, I would say 10 to 12 hours of very high intensity hiking per day, often at a very steep incline. So for generalized cardiorespiratory and muscular endurance, A, and these are not in order of priority, and then B, for ostensible life extension purposes. That's it. I've always been more of a power athlete or strength athlete than an endurance athlete. And it would be, fun may not be the right word, but it would be

Starting point is 00:46:53 worthwhile, I think, for me to establish a baseline and then attempt to improve the markers that matter and watch that over time. I would say then if you could give me three 25 minute blocks of time a week. So let's say we're going to design this to be a 25 minute session of training that you do three times a week. We'll have a very short warmup and a very short cool down. So let's assume we have 20 minutes to work with where you're actually putting out some effort. And could you, not to interrupt, I apologize, but I'd love to hear what you'd recommend for warm-up and cool-down also. The warm-up and cool-downs would be quite short. So let's describe the protocol here.

Starting point is 00:47:37 What I'd have you do, come in and do two minutes on the bike at a low workload setting to warm up. I'm saying the bike because, you know, you alluded to maybe some joint or connective tissue issues there with the hamstring or, you know, many people have aging knees. I put myself in that category. So all of my interval training or almost all of it is on a bike. But the warmup would be brief and it would be perhaps 75 watts, so a low workload setting. And then we'd get right into the hard work. And now, you know, from the outset, let me say, we would always recommend that someone see their physician before they begin or change an exercise routine. So let's get that out of the way. But in our studies, even in individuals with type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, we typically keep the warm-ups and the cool-downs quite short because otherwise

Starting point is 00:48:32 it detracts from the time efficiency. So in almost all of our studies, the standard warm-up is two minutes and a standard cool-down is three minutes. And that's typically just very light cycling, unloaded cycling, or maybe at a very low workload setting, as I say, around 50 watts or so. I'm going to ask a nitty gritty question. I apologize. What type of bikes do you use for these studies in terms of make and model? We use a variety of bikes at home in my basement. I have a life cycle, a 95C life cycle that I use. Inside of our research laboratory, we have a couple of different bikes. We have Lodi Excalibur Sports, which are one of the Cadillac versions on the

Starting point is 00:49:14 market. What was that first name? The first word in? Lodi, L-O-D-E. It's a company out of Germany. And so they would be a gold standard ergometer that a lot of exercise physiology labs would have. We've also used Racermate bikes in the lab. And we've also recently purchased a couple of Kettler bikes, which are certainly cheaper than Lodi's, but they're electrically braked ergometers. So they're quite accurate in terms of, uh, holding, uh, the power output, uh, that set. So we, we use a couple of different bikes, but, uh, those would be the ones. Sorry to interrupt. So we've, we've gone through the two minute warmup with say potentially 75 Watts, right? And then I would have you do a

Starting point is 00:50:03 series of intervals, hard intervals that last between three and five minutes. So let's say if you have 20 minutes, I would have you do, um, three to start to pick one. We'll do three, five minute efforts, uh, with a little bit of recovery in between. So I'd have to check my math there, but, uh, you know, so that would basically be 15 minutes of hard riding within that 20 minute period. And so I would structure initially the intervals to last between three and five minutes. And so this, you know, we would adjust the workload setting appropriately so that let's say you're doing three minute repeats. You don't want to go much more at the end of those three minutes, but if I give you a period of recovery,

Starting point is 00:50:48 you're able to repeat the three minutes a couple of times, or if it was a five minute interval, it would be the same thing. So we would set the workload so the intervals are challenging and you're almost ready to give up where you're getting towards the end of the three or five minute interval,

Starting point is 00:51:09 but then we give you a little bit of break and you do it again. And why I say the three to five minute intervals is if you look at the literature and there's been a number of review articles and meta-analyses that have been conducted and just through practical experience with coaches and athletes, many would recommend that that repeated intervals of three to five minutes in duration is going to provide the most effective stimulus for boosting VO2 max. So that's, I think, where I'd start, but we would vary it up as well. Another common protocol is what we call the 10 by 1. So one minute of hard exercise with one minute of recovery, and you repeat that 10 times. this as you're working with the subject, but what type of wattage, how would you determine the setting to start with? Yeah. So again, if it was you, ideally how we do this in the lab, for example, if we had the

Starting point is 00:52:20 opportunity to do it in advance, we would have you come into the lab and perform a VO2 max test. So typically in our lab, we use ramp VO2 max tests. So we have a very standard protocol of we increase the workload setting one watt every two seconds. And so basically what it feels like is you're climbing up a hill that gets steeper and steeper and steeper. It starts out pretty easy, and then the workload catches up on you over time. And why we like the ramp test is, again, at some point you're going to hit exhaustion or fatigue, and I could say, ah, Tim, your peak power output was 388 watts or 452 watts. And then we would begin by taking percentages of that peak power output. Got it. That peak power output becomes your a hundred percent.

Starting point is 00:53:11 Exactly. And so we know from experience, there's always a little bit of trial and error, but if you're, you know, a relatively fit individual, you might be able to do repeats at 90 or 95% of that peak power output and hold that for a couple of minutes whereas some other individuals especially those who are very deconditioned if i put them at 60 percent of peak power output they would struggle to last for one minute so that's where knowing a little bit about the typical training background of the individual comes into play but there's always a little bit of trial and error there. The other way that we could do it if we didn't have access to

Starting point is 00:53:49 that VO2 max test in advance is say, okay, we want you on these 10 by 1 intervals, ideally to get to 85 or 90% of your maximal heart rate during every interval. And then we could adjust the workload setting in a corresponding manner. So we can either do it very objectively based on wattage, or we can do it more subjectively based on heart rate responses or even ratings of perceived exertion. Got it. No, that makes sense. And the 10 by 1, that is 10 pairs of one minute hard, one minute easy, effectively. So you have 10 sets per se of single minute hard interspersed with, so it's a total of 20 minutes. Correct. And again, we've used that protocol extensively in our research. We didn't design it.

Starting point is 00:54:41 Others, and again, this is where I, as I learn more about the scientific literature, this was a very common protocol used in Germany in the mid-80s on individuals in cardiac rehabilitation settings. So that's a protocol that I think has wide applicability. We've used it on individuals with type 2 diabetes. My colleagues and other individuals have applied it to individuals with cardiovascular disease in a cardiac rehabilitation setting. And we've used it on very fit young men. And again, that's where we scale the percentage of PPO. But in all of those individuals, it's been effective to boost their health outcomes and boost their maximal aerobic capacity as well. PPO, not to be confused with HMO and PPO in healthcare in the US, that's the peak power output.

Starting point is 00:55:31 Correct. Okay. How would you determine which of, say, just for the sake of illustration, the three to five minute intervals times three versus the 10 by one, which subject to apply one of these protocols to? Probably the deconditioned individuals, we would start with shorter, more frequent repeats. And that's one of the reasons I think the three to five minutes is so effective for boosting VO2 max is it's challenging to maintain a relatively high workload for a period of time of three to five minutes or so. That's very challenging in the way that even the energy systems in the body are utilized to produce energy to sustain that is different. And so I think the more deconditioned the individual, the more effective protocols or the more tolerable programs for those individuals involve more frequent repeats that last a shorter period of time. And then, of course, the progression is

Starting point is 00:56:39 either increasing the workload and keeping the protocol the same. Or if you play this out, what you basically do is increase the work interval, decrease the recovery interval until at some point that individual might be able to sustain 20 minutes of continuous exercise at that pace. And I suppose it depends of course, as with many things on your goals. In the case of the goals that I laid out before we chatted about the protocol, for the three to five minute intervals, is it pure rest in between those intervals or is it easier cycling and why? Good question. Ideally, we want the recovery to be active. Why is that? Well, one of the reasons is, especially when you do very hard exercise and then you completely stop, the risk of things like fainting is increased. And that's because

Starting point is 00:57:39 you can have a fall in blood pressure when you stop after doing very hard exercise. And one of the reasons for that is you have all of this vasodilation or opening of the vessels, especially in the legs, and you have a pooling of blood in the lower extremities. And so one of the reasons that people can faint after doing a very vigorous bout of exercise when they stop is they have this pooling in the lower extremities. They don't have the venous return or pushing the blood back to the heart. And of course, the blood flow to the brain then transiently decreases and so you faint. So one is a very practical reason, and that's we want to minimize the risk of fainting, especially in some of these

Starting point is 00:58:21 older or deconditioned individuals. And of course, the risk of fainting is higher the more intense the previous exercise. So that's a very practical consideration. Also, you want to just keep the blood flowing a little bit, you know, flush out some of these metabolites that you've produced during the previous hard bouts. And so that's a consideration as well. So all things being equal, active recovery at a very low workload setting is preferred. But let's face it, sometimes these intervals are very, very demanding and people would rather just stop and wait. If you've ever done a Wingate test, you don't want to do much exercise in the subsequent few periods of recovery.

Starting point is 00:59:02 You just want to stop and maybe sit on the ground. So this is where there's that trade-off between the preceding intensity and what the recovery might look like. And with the active recovery in this case, so we're doing three sets per se of three to five minute intervals. Let's just say five minutes. If the warmup was at 75 watts, what would the wattage be on the active recovery? Yeah, we would keep the active recovery quite low as well. So maybe even going back to 75 or maybe a hundred Watts. Uh, and it goes to then you don't want to work too hard, frankly, in the recovery periods, because that's going to take away from your ability to put out the

Starting point is 00:59:42 hard efforts, uh, when you're really going for it. And so surprisingly, you know, your heart rate, your oxygen uptake, your metabolism stays up very high during these recovery periods, even though the actual workload setting can be quite low. But I think, you know, this sawtooth pattern of going hard and then taking a break. And what I mean by taking a break is keeping the recovery periods active, but the workload setting quite low. That's important because that allows you to sort of refuel a little bit, recharge and be able to go hard in the subsequent interval. And how do you decide on optimal?

Starting point is 01:00:22 I'll just call it rest period, even though we're talking active recovery, how do you decide on optimal rest period? And the reason I ask is, for instance, in strength training, if you're looking for hypertrophy versus maximal strength, the rest periods can vary dramatically. You might have powerlifters who take five to 10 minutes between sets because they want to, among other things, completely regenerate creatine phosphate and so on. How do you determine the optimal rest period in between these intervals? It's a really good question. Part of it is definitely the metabolic considerations that you alluded to there.

Starting point is 01:01:03 And so are subjects able to restore their phosphocreatine reserves within their muscle? Generally speaking, you can replace about 50% of your phosphocreatine within a minute or so. And if you give four minutes of recovery, you can have near complete restoration of phosphocreatine. That, of course, depends on a couple of factors. So part of the consideration then is how much we want to allow the individuals to refuel. But the considerations that go into it, and this is where it comes back to that first question that I asked you, is what's an individual's goals? What time do they have available for the workout? Because you can allow ample periods of recovery, but especially if you're

Starting point is 01:01:45 talking about this notion of time efficient exercise recovery periods can't can't be too long so sometimes there's practical considerations that we will take into play there the other is the fundamental question and we honestly don't have the the answer to it and that's, is it the absolute power that drives the adaptation, or is it the relative stress? So to put that in another way, I could have people do intervals in a glycogen depleted state or with full carbohydrate restoration. If they're glycogen depleted, their power outputs are going to be lower, and they're going to feel a lot crappier. But the adaptations may, in some respects, be a little bit better. And so to put that in the context of recovery, if we don't allow, quote unquote, full recovery, the subsequent power output in the other intervals is probably going to be lower.

Starting point is 01:02:44 But the relative stress on the individual is going to be higher. And so I think it comes back to this idea of variety. Variability is a good thing because we're just hitting the body in so many different ways. And so for most individuals, there is no single best program and varying up the intervals is a good strategy. Now, sorry, just to add there, obviously if we're talking about an elite athlete and we have a very specific coach who knows this very specific athlete very well,

Starting point is 01:03:16 the program is going to be very tailored and very precisely figured out. But more generally speaking for an individual, even like yourself, I think bearing it up is a good approach. How frequently would you do the, the three times five minutes effort workout? How, how often meaning how many times per week, for instance, or how many rest days in between? Yeah. So if, and this is where, again, it goes to the goals of the individual, but I would say these intervals can be challenging, clearly mentally demanding and

Starting point is 01:03:53 fatiguing. So if you're an individual that can tolerate three sessions a week of this type of training. Oh, that's right. Three times a week is what you said. But you know, if, if some other individuals can't, can't tolerate that, so that's a consideration as well. What I will say is in the vast majority of our studies, we use a protocol of three times per week in our interval training for, you know, two, six or 12 weeks, however long the study is going to be. And how does what we just spoke about differ from the namesake of the book, which is the one- of a teaser headline, but it specifically refers to a protocol that we devised where the work involved is three 20-second efforts. So the total amount of hard work during a

Starting point is 01:04:56 workout, if you will, is only one minute. And that one minute is broken up into three intervals that last 20 seconds in duration. Now Now those intervals are truly all-out exercise. So the workload setting on a bike is very, very high. And the pace I would use to describe it is sprint from danger pace or the pace you would cycle at to save your child from an oncoming car. This is very demanding exercise. But what we've demonstrated is that type of exercise can be extremely effective. So there's this clearly an intensity duration trade-off. The more intense you're willing and able to work, the smaller the volume of exercise you can get away with and still reap benefits. And it's not necessarily a linear relationship. It's almost an exponential relationship. So we're talking about very short, very, very hard efforts. It's a surprisingly

Starting point is 01:05:50 small dose that you need in order to trigger a lot of these adaptations. And what type of rest intervals do you have between these 20 second efforts? So our, because we were, you know, we had done a number of these studies with, I mentioned Wingate exercise before these 30 second all out efforts. And then we would give people a couple of minutes of recovery and they'd repeat that four or five times. And we were sensitive to the criticism, the legitimate criticism that, well, when you do these Wingate training protocols, they require about a 25 or 30 minute time commitment. And so, yeah, it's only two or three minutes of exercise,

Starting point is 01:06:31 but it's a half hour of time commitment. So it's really not that time efficient, especially when we place it up against the public health guidelines, you know, the lower end of which is 75 minutes of vigorous exercise. So we wanted to come up with protocols that were unquestionably time efficient. And so the standard one minute workout, if you will, involves that two minute warmup and three minute cool down. So that's five minutes of warmup and cool down. And then the hard work is a 20 second effort, two minutes of recovery, the second 20 second effort, another two minutes of recovery, and the third and final 20 second sprint. So you basically have a five minute work period,

Starting point is 01:07:11 which involves that one minute of hard exercise. So bottom line, the protocol, including warmup and cool down is 10 minutes start to finish. But within that 10 minutes, you're doing one minute of very vigorous exercise. And in subjects who are deconditioned, or let's just say relatively untrained, these are not people who engage in any type of regular, let's just say, leg dominant or certainly leg inclusive workouts, right? These are not people who are going for steep hikes three times a week or doing any type of cycling or high rep squat workouts, anything like that. What type of improvements, if you were to take a huge sample of say a thousand people, what type of improvements would you be looking for or expect on average and in what markers?

Starting point is 01:08:07 Yeah. So, and first point to make is that most of these studies are relatively small. And so that idea of the large study with a thousand people, those are really some of the studies that need to be done in interval training research. Maybe we can get into that later. But in our studies, to give you one specific example, we've compared that one minute protocol. So this involves one minute of exercise within a 10 minute time commitment. And people do that three times per week. So the sprint group, if you will, is doing

Starting point is 01:08:37 three minutes of intense exercise within a 30 minute time commitment each week. We've compared that protocol to a group who does traditional cardio or the type of continuous steady state training that's reflected in the public health guidelines. So the other group that we compared them to was doing 50, five zero minutes of continuous exercise three times per week. So one group doing 150 minutes of traditional moderate intensity cardio, the other group doing a 30 minute interval workout, but within that 30 minutes, it was only three minutes of very intense exercise. And in our most recent study, which was 12 weeks in duration, the key outcome measures were VO2 max, as we've talked about. We measured citrate synthase, so a marker of muscle health by taking biopsies. And we also measured what we call their glycemic control or an index of their

Starting point is 01:09:40 insulin sensitivity, basically how well the body utilizes blood sugar using a test called an intravenous glucose tolerance test, where you literally infuse a bolus of sugar into people's veins and you watch how that sugar is handled over a period of time. It's a relatively robust marker of insulin sensitivity. And what we found after 12 weeks is despite the huge difference in time commitment, all of the markers improved by the same extent on average in the two groups. So the improvement that we saw in VO2 max was 19% on average over 12 weeks, and that was the same in the two groups. We saw about a 30% increase in that marker of their mitochondrial content. Again, quite similar in the two groups. If anything, it was a little bit higher in the

Starting point is 01:10:32 interval training group and the same for insulin sensitivity. The improvement that we saw statistically was the same, but it tended to be a little bit higher in the interval training group. So a real striking example, I think, of the potency of interval exercise, especially these short all-out intervals, to elicit changes that we more traditionally associate with public health guidelines type research. That's not to say at all that we're criticizing the public health guidelines. It's just a striking illustration of the fact that you can elicit a lot of these traditional cardio responses and muscle metabolic responses and health responses using these short, very hard bursts of exercise. And how do you, how would you suggest people begin a program like this? Let's just say,

Starting point is 01:11:23 and maybe the answer is what we already talked about, whether it's the three to five minute intervals. And what were the, can you just remind me, what would you suggest as a starting rest interval? Because we talked about the benefits of potentially replenishing phosphate creatine, but then also the potential improvement, the magnitude of change if you're operating from a deficit per se. So where would you suggest I start, for instance, if I'm doing these three five-minute efforts, how much rest would I take in between with the easy pedaling? Yeah. So if we were going to the 20 minutes that we were talking about there, if you built in

Starting point is 01:11:59 five-minute intervals with two minutes of easy pedaling, or I guess it would be two and a half minutes of easy pedaling, that would add up to your 20 minutes. So five minutes, two and a half minutes recovery, another five minutes, two and a half minutes recovery, and the third and final five minute effort. If we were doing three minute repeats, you know, you could do a series of five by four. So three minute effort, one minute of recovery and repeat that five times. And that would add up to your 20 minutes. So again, I think someone like yourself, I would lean maybe towards the shorter recovery because you're already in relatively decent shape, of course. And so ideally you want to do as much high intensity work as you can within that 20 minute timeframe. Now, if we were to move you

Starting point is 01:12:46 to the one minute workout, of course, you're going all out. So the efforts would be extremely demanding and the peak power outputs that someone like you could elicit are obviously going to be much higher than someone who's not in as good a shape or certainly someone who's more deconditioned. So there's a couple ways to answer your general question. The first is what we'll generally tell people is just get out of your comfort zone. And so if you're new to intervals, maybe starting with the gentle interval walking approach or utilizing that strategy of going hard for a couple of minutes and then backing off for a couple of minutes, that's a beginner interval workout. And, you know, in the book, we lay out some examples.

Starting point is 01:13:30 We have 12 different workouts that we lay out, all based on science. So people would know that the basics of these workouts are grounded in good science, but we present them as providing individuals with some ideas and different varieties of interval training protocols that they might use, depending if they're just starting out, depending if they're a more highly trained individual. Again, providing some of the science behind that with the first study, you've been innovating in this space and experienced some blowback or criticism, or not even criticism, maybe skepticism. No, we've been criticized. Yeah, you've been criticized, but you certainly get criticism, but skepticism. What are, outside of what you've written in this book, what are things that you believe that other people might think are crazy? Is there anything else that comes to mind where you disagree with conventional thinking or conclusions as they stand right now?

Starting point is 01:14:47 It doesn't have to be limited to physiology, but certainly could be in physiology. No, well, I almost hesitate to say this a little bit because I'm sure I might get some blowback even on this. But in some ways, I see a move to demonize traditional cardio, if you will, or you will read things like traditional modern intensity exercise is ineffective, or it has no place. And, you know, I would, I disagree with that. Clearly, I'm a very, I'm big on interval training, I'm a proponent of it, I think it can be widely applied. and I think it can be extremely beneficial for a lot of individuals. And so I think it's underutilized and it's very effective. But that's not to say that there's no place for traditional steady state exercise. And certainly it's erroneous to suggest

Starting point is 01:15:38 that that type of training is completely irrelevant or won't provide you with any benefits. So I guess that would be one example where I might take exception to some advice, common advice that I will often hear. A few other questions related, maybe in a related, actually, I'm going to jump into the calisthenic component. So I've read that you've said before, if you had to choose one exercise, you would choose the burpee. So I'm a big fan of burpees. I've done a lot of burpees in my life from wrestling and jujitsu and so on. Pukies are a nice variation of that as well

Starting point is 01:16:20 with the pull-up bar above you. But I wanted to... A, do you still feel that way about burpees? And then B, I've read that you, in resistance training, in the resistance training that you do, you train to failure, but you'll do cycles. So you have three sets to failure of each exercise. So be curious to know, so A, do you still feel that way about the burpees? And then B, why three sets to failure as opposed to one or two? I do feel that way about the burpee. And, you know, let's frame the question here. And the question that I received was what is the single best exercise, which really means, you know, if you were only restricted to one exercise, what would you do and why? And obviously, even the it's hard to fathom the question, but I

Starting point is 01:17:12 would pick the burpee because number one, it requires no specialized equipment. It's a body weight style movement, so you can do them anywhere. Number two, it's going to build both strength and cardiorespiratory fitness. So if you do burpee sets, obviously you're going to have some push-up motion in there, you're going to have some leg strength development, but if you're doing burpee sets, and it goes to the second part of your question I guess, why would you do three sets? Because I think applying burpees in an interval manner and doing a couple of sets of them allow you to keep the heart rate up, which is going to provide the cardiovascular training. So I would stick with the burpees. It can be done anywhere. And if you do burpee sets, it provides both a cardiorespiratory boost as well as a strength boost. You know,

Starting point is 01:18:07 if I can just say, I think I also said at the time when I was asked the question, I don't really see anyone ever sticking with a burpee workout over time because let's face it, burpees suck. Burpees are really hard to do. But if I can give a shout out to this individual who contacted me, his name is Josh Spodek. He lives in Manhattan. He's a PhD in astrophysics. He's got an MBA. And he contacted me to say, you know, I read that piece in the New York Times and I sort of took it up as a challenge.

Starting point is 01:18:34 And I've been doing burpees every day for five years. And, you know, it's basically become his go-to exercise. And so clearly some individuals could keep it as their sort of go-to exercise. So good on you, Josh. I certainly couldn't keep that up, even though I said it would be my go-to exercise. Yeah, burpees, I wouldn't give them a very high ranking in the physical recreation category for sure. If I could just make a comment too, Tim, and it goes, you know, I just said burpees suck, they hurt. This is something around interval training where

Starting point is 01:19:12 there's definitely very visceral reactions around the potential translatability. And so my colleagues who are in the exercise and health psychology area who talk about things like mood, affect, motivation, long-term adherence, there's a real visceral debate going on right now around the potential long-term translatability of interval training. Clearly, I'm someone who is in the camp of, yes, I think this is very much a viable public health strategy. Certain types of interval training are highly suited for many different individuals. And again, it goes back to this idea that people think interval training only means extreme style training. But there's a large segment, or there's certainly an opinion out out there that this is not a viable public health strategy at all.

Starting point is 01:20:07 I happen to disagree with that because I think the more menu options we can give people, the more exercise choices, the better. But this idea that, you know, intervals can be an uncomfortable way to train and that might turn people off exercise. That's certainly a sentiment in some quarters. How do you, if we were looking at, I mean, at least as I think about it, the three legs of the stool for a sustainable beneficial exercise program, if you have at the top of the, if you have at the top, if we're trying to look at a hierarchy adherence. Will the subject actually perform this routine over time? And then you have effectiveness. Does it produce the results desired in any shape or form? And then efficiency, as we've talked about a number of times, time efficiency. How do you increase the longer term adherence to interval training?

Starting point is 01:21:06 Is it just a matter of starting off very moderate and then conditioning people over time, both psychologically and physically, to the sometimes uncomfortable stimulus? Are there other aspects to program design that you would encourage people to think about? There's a chapter in the book we talk about this, the psychology of interval training. And I interviewed a couple of experts who provide some tips, even things like, for example, starting out early in the day, avoiding comparisons, rewarding yourself, giving yourself a little treat after celebrating success. Don't beat yourself up. You know, I think some people can get down on exercise if they don't have a big block of time or they're, for example, unable to sustain a moderate intensity jog for 45 minutes

Starting point is 01:21:55 or so. They start to beat themselves up. I think with intervals, you can do a short interval and experience a sensation of success. Hey, hey, I did that. And, you know, going back to the cardiac patients, almost any of these individuals, as they go through their life, life is an interval exercise for these individuals because just moving around can be quite challenging. And so even just to get around and go through activities of daily living, they have to perform it in an interval manner. So I think my answer is there's certain types of interval training that are suited

Starting point is 01:22:32 for certain types of individuals. And we also know that, again, I'm not a health psychologist, but when I talk to my colleagues who are experts in this, going back to this idea of menu choices, the more options we can give people, the better. And I think interval training offers, as we've been talking about, almost an infinite variety of ways to structure the workouts where, you know, there's only so many ways to jump on a treadmill and jog at a moderate pace for 45 minutes or an hour. You can watch a lot of different shows on Netflix while you're doing it though. The other thing is that intervals, I think, provide a way to structure exercise into your life rather than having to fit your life around exercise. And so people talk about

Starting point is 01:23:20 stealth interval workouts. As corny as it sounds, taking the stairs. Lots of us live in apartment buildings or work in office towers. That's a stealth interval workouts. You know, as corny as it sounds, taking the stairs. Lots of us live in apartment buildings or work in office towers. That's a stealth interval workout, just doing a couple of stair flights throughout the day. There's this concept of exercise snacking. And we're learning that, for example, it might be better to do three 10-minute bouts of exercise through the day rather than a single structured 30 minute bout of continuous exercise, at least when it comes to things like your blood sugar control. So the intervals are well suited for this concept of, uh, of exercise snacking as well. Mm-hmm. Uh, Marty, a couple of non-physiology, non-physiology questions, although they,

Starting point is 01:24:03 they could end up producing answers that have something to do with it. What books have you gifted the most to other people? Yeah. And you know, this question, I'm going to sound like a scientist here, but one of the books that I've given out a lot is called The Craft of Scientific Writing. It's certainly something that I'm working on, but you know, when I've gifted books, it's often been either to a colleague or definitely new up and coming people in the discipline of, of, of science. And the way you write scientifically is obviously different, uh, from, from other writing. And if, if you want to write scientifically, but in a compelling way for individuals to try and translate the science into the lay public, for example. That's really what I try to do with the

Starting point is 01:24:51 One Minute Workout is boil the science down, write it in a compelling and accessible manner. And certainly I had tremendous assistance from a colleague, Christopher Shulgin, who's just a tremendous writer. And we know we're on the right spot where I was happy from the scientific message and Chris was happy with the writing or at least the readability or the accessibility of the writing style. And that's a real challenge, of course. It's an art as much as it is a science. And so a book like The Craft of Scientific Writing helps provide some tips there. Because if you're a scientist coming up, you're constantly writing. You're writing grants.

Starting point is 01:25:30 You're writing papers. And you want to convince people of the point that you're making. You don't want to bore them. And you want to do it in a compelling manner. What are some of your or any science writers or science books that come to mind as good examples to you? Atul Gawande comes to mind for me, Checklist Manifesto, and others certainly. Do any particular writers or books come to mind that have a scientific accuracy to them that are compelling?

Starting point is 01:26:07 Yeah, you know, obviously I have a ton of respect for someone like Gretchen Reynolds at the New York Times. She's obviously a big proponent of interval training. She's been a supporter of our work, but, you know, her book, The First 20 Minutes, I think provided a really good example or it set a bar for us in terms of trying to structure the one minute workout where you're trying to boil the science down, present it in a compelling manner. There's a Canadian named Alex Hutchinson who writes for our national newspaper, The Globe and Mail. He has a book which comes first, Cardio or Weights. Same thing where he's, I think there's

Starting point is 01:26:42 a gift there in terms of boiling these scientific complex science down into compelling narratives that people can can read and understand. So that's you know, that's initially two names that come to mind, at least in terms of people that are taking science, taking scientific studies and trying to boil it down into accessible messages that people can use in their everyday lives. So speaking of everyday life, this one is not always the easiest question, but we're going to probably wrap up on this, which is if you could put a message, a short message on a gigantic billboard, and of course, metaphorically, you're just getting a message out to millions of people, anything non-commercial, what would you put on that billboard and of course metaphorically you're just getting a message out to millions of people anything non-commercial what would you put on that billboard and i don't want to fail miserably on this last test because because part of me is like oh my god what would i have that's so compelling to say that i'm going to put it out there on on on a billboard but you know we were talking earlier

Starting point is 01:27:39 a little bit offline just as a scientist getting out of your comfort zone a little bit as a scientist you're you tend to be so cautious, right? You're like, almost everything you say, our studies end with, well, we need more research on this, or you write a grant and you're afraid to get out of your comfort zone. And certainly as I've gone through the process of, of writing this, this book by collaborating with Chris Shogan on, on this book, it was really a, a matter of, you know what, we do have something to say here. And there might be an, you know, there's an audience out there that needs this, because I would often get questions around where can I go for more information? Where can I learn more about

Starting point is 01:28:16 interval training for health? And I really couldn't point to a specific website or book that was out there. And so in some ways, we tried to fill that void with the book and boiling it down. And so I guess going to the billboard question, it would really be a matter of telling people, not to steal something from Nike, but just get out there and do it. Or you know what? If you don't have a 40 mile five minute block of time to work out, that's okay. You know, build intervals or build exercise, build movement into your life, because we really, really need that. And you know, you look at the profound influences that that could have in terms of boosting health, lowering care costs. When I talk to my students, it's about

Starting point is 01:29:05 where could all of that money that we're otherwise spending on drugs and pills go? Well, we could use that investments in other places to better support people because, you know, it's almost like I'm stealing other people's lines here. But this notion of exercise is medicine, it's absolutely true. Exercise is the best medicine. It has so few side effects associated with it, but the benefit that we can get from it is tremendous. And I think some people are afraid of exercise or, you know, obviously the number one cited barrier for why people don't exercise is lack of time or perceived lack of time. And people have it in their heads that if I don't have this big block of time to exercise, it's not worth it or they blow it off. And so if there's a message, it's really no. Time efficiency, we understand,

Starting point is 01:29:59 is important. But even if you have a 10-minute period of time in the day get out there move intervals provide an extremely effective way to build time efficient exercise into your day and of course the benefits of that are profound don't think of it as you need to exercise to lose weight and that's what confers health as we've been talking about there's a direct line there between exercise boosting your cardiorespiratory fitness lowering lowering your risk of dying, lowering your risk of developing many of these chronic conditions. I had an idea also that you could use, and I will not charge my typical royalty for this. It's one minute disappointing in the bedroom, plenty in the gym. And then you have your

Starting point is 01:30:48 URL, uh, Marty, where can people learn more about you? Find, uh, you the book, say hello on social media or whatever you would like to mention. Uh, sure. I'm on, uh, Twitter, uh, Gabala M at Gabala M. M. The book will be published by Penguin Random House. It will be out on February 7th. You can pre-order now from all of the usual booksellers. Fantastic. Any parting words otherwise that you'd like to request? Or otherwise, I think you probably hit it in that last answer, but anything else that you'd like to say or request to the audience? No, I guess if I had to come up with something for that billboard, then maybe it's life is an

Starting point is 01:31:30 interval workout. You know, maybe that's the way to go. Maybe that's the name of the next book. No, obviously I'm, I'm big on exercise. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk to a little bit about that, but you know, exercise is, is, is fantastic. And if we could just get more people moving, uh, the enormous impact and benefit that would have on, on public health. Agreed. And personal health, which is what it starts with in a sense. Uh, Marty, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it. And to everybody listening, you can find show notes, links to everything we discussed as per usual at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. You can find links, resources from every episode, including this one. And until next time,

Starting point is 01:32:16 thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little

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Starting point is 01:33:50 versions. I like the version that Neil narrates himself. One of the most soothing voices of all time. The second book is Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, P-O-T-T-S, which had a huge impact on my life and formed the basis for a lot of what would later become the 4-Hour Workweek. So go to audible.com forward slash Tim and you can choose one of these two books or any of many, many other options. That could be books, magazines, and much more. As a listener of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can also access a free 30-day trial. Just go to audible.com forward slash Tim. You can't make more time, but you can make the most of it.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #217: The One-Minute Workout Designed by Scientists -- Dr. Martin Gibala

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