Endurance Workout Quotes

doubling of endurance capacity in only six training sessions? With just sixteen minutes of hard exercise? It seemed miraculous.

When you eat right and sleep like a primal champ, your body does a good job recovering and getting stronger from bouts of appropriate stress like an occasional tough workout.

Believe it or not, going out and doing four to six hundred-meter sprints is a perfectly respectable workout for an endurance athlete. That’s only a couple minutes total of hard work,

MSP workouts involve full-body functional movements like deadlifts, squats, leg presses, and vertical jumps. MSP workouts feature heavy weights, few reps, and more rest. By doing a succession of mini-sets, you “go max or go home.

We decided to compare our sprint-training program with a strenuous regimen of moderate-intensity endurance training based on the typical physical-activity guidelines. We recruited twenty people and divided them into two groups, with five men and five women in each group.

The Primal Essential Movements offer a simple, entry-level way to include strength training in your lifestyle. They entail conducting pushups, pullups, squats, and planks on a regular basis, with more attention to paid to formal workouts during the intensity training phases.

So if you add it all up, weight workouts give you two, and possibly three, important advantages over endurance exercise: 1. The afterburn, which might be an extra 50 calories. 2. A higher percentage of fat calories used for energy after the workout. 3. A possible increase in resting metabolic rate, in the neighborhood of 50 calories a day.

That means to push very heavy weight, repeatedly, and to constantly strive to elevate both your baseline numbers and the total weight lifted at the workout—until you start to reach a natural limit relative to your competitive goals. This will deliver improvements in strength and subsequent improvements in endurance performance, and also maximize the hormonal, anti-aging benefits of the workout.

One group was put on a quite rigorous endurance training regimen for six weeks. These subjects rode stationary bicycles five days a week for forty to sixty minutes per day. They cycled at an intensity of 65 percent of their maximal aerobic capacity, which is within the moderate range as recommended in the public health guidelines. The pace was enough to get their heart rate elevated and get them sweating.

Maximum Sustained Power workouts are much less taxing on the cardio endurance component and instead focus on going for max power or going home. Literally, you end your mini-sets when you can’t lift the heavy bar again due to accumulated fatigue. Or, in the case of vertical jumps or calibrated exercise equipment, you stop the set when you fall materially short of your baseline absolute power performance standard that you started the workout with.

Most remarkably, research we’ve just conducted in my lab tracked the 1-minute-interval protocol’s effects over 12 weeks on sedentary, nonathletic individuals and compared the benefits to those of another group that conducted 135 minutes a week of moderate aerobic exercise. And the benefits were the same. That’s right: It was possible for everyday, nonathletic sedentary individuals to derive the cardiorespiratory benefits of 135 minutes a week of traditional endurance training—three 45-minute sessions per week—with just a single minute’s worth of hard exercise repeated three times per week.

Peak Intensity • 10+ Duration • 25 minutes The Evidence • When it comes to boosting fitness, there’s something remarkably potent about going all out—and this is the protocol that helped us grasp that. We based it on repeats of the Wingate test, a 30-second all-out sprint on a stationary bike. It’s exhausting—and remarkably powerful. The training protocol features a series of five 30-second all-out sprints, a total of just 2.5 minutes of hard exercise per day. In our study, we had our subjects repeat the protocol three times a week, amounting to a weekly time commitment of just 1.5 hours, and less than 10 minutes of hard exercise a week. After 6 weeks, we compared the sprint group’s benefits with those experienced by a group that exercised continuously at a moderate intensity five times a week for a total of 4.5 hours a week, also for 6 weeks. The sprint subjects either equaled or exceeded the conventional exercisers in their improvements in aerobic capacity, muscle endurance, and the ability to burn fat. A remarkable result, considering the sprint group spent a third of the time exercising.

Peak Intensity • 10+ Duration • 25 minutes The Evidence • When it comes to boosting fitness, there’s something remarkably potent about going all out—and this is the protocol that helped us grasp that. We based it on repeats of the Wingate test, a 30-second all-out sprint on a stationary bike. It’s exhausting—and remarkably powerful. The training protocol features a series of five 30-second all-out sprints, a total of just 2.5 minutes of hard exercise per day. In our study, we had our subjects repeat the protocol three times a week, amounting to a weekly time commitment of just 1.5 hours, and less than 10 minutes of hard exercise a week. After 6 weeks, we compared the sprint group’s benefits with those experienced by a group that exercised continuously at a moderate intensity five times a week for a total of 4.5 hours a week, also for 6 weeks. The sprint subjects either equaled or exceeded the conventional exercisers in their improvements in aerobic capacity, muscle endurance, and the ability to burn fat. A remarkable result, considering the sprint group spent a third of the time exercising. Who

IS CARDIO BEST BEFORE OR AFTER LIFTING? NEITHER! Doing cardio right before or after lifting can seriously hinder muscle and strength gains. Why? Researchers from RMIT University worked with well–trained athletes in 2009 and found that “combining resistance exercise and cardio in the same session may disrupt genes for anabolism.” In laymen’s terms, they found that combining endurance and resistance training sends “mixed signals” to the muscles37. Cardio before the resistance training suppressed anabolic hormones such as IGF–1 and MGF, and cardio after resistance training increased muscle tissue breakdown. Several other studies, such as those conducted by Children’s National Medical Center38, the Waikato Institute of Technology39, and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland)40 , came to same conclusions: training for both endurance and strength simultaneously impairs your gains on both fronts. Training purely for strength or purely for endurance in a workout is far superior. Cardio before weightlifting also saps your energy and makes it much harder to train heavy, which in turn inhibits your muscle growth. So, how do you do it right?

Time management also involves energy management. Sometimes the rationalization for procrastination is wrapped up in the form of the statement “I’m not up to this,” which reflects the fact you feel tired, stressed, or some other uncomfortable state. Consequently, you conclude that you do not have the requisite energy for a task, which is likely combined with a distorted justification for putting it off (e.g., “I have to be at my best or else I will be unable to do it.”). Similar to reframing time, it is helpful to respond to the “I’m not up to this” reaction by reframing energy. Thinking through the actual behavioral and energy requirements of a job challenges the initial and often distorted reasoning with a more realistic view. Remember, you only need “enough” energy to start the task. Consequently, being “too tired” to unload the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry can be reframed to see these tasks as requiring only a low level of energy and focus. This sort of reframing can be used to address automatic thoughts about energy on tasks that require a little more get-up-and-go. For example, it is common for people to be on the fence about exercising because of the thought “I’m too tired to exercise.” That assumption can be redirected to consider the energy required for the smaller steps involved in the “exercise script” that serve as the “launch sequence” for getting to the gym (e.g., “Are you too tired to stand up and get your workout clothes? Carry them to the car?” etc.). You can also ask yourself if you have ever seen people at the gym who are slumped over the exercise machines because they ran out of energy from trying to exert themselves when “too tired.” Instead, you can draw on past experience that you will end up feeling better and more energized after exercise; in fact, you will sleep better, be more rested, and have the positive outcome of keeping up with your exercise plan. If nothing else, going through this process rather than giving into the impulse to avoid makes it more likely that you will make a reasoned decision rather than an impulsive one about the task. A separate energy management issue relevant to keeping plans going is your ability to maintain energy (and thereby your effort) over longer courses of time. Managing ADHD is an endurance sport. It is said that good soccer players find their rest on the field in order to be able to play the full 90 minutes of a game. Similarly, you will have to manage your pace and exertion throughout the day. That is, the choreography of different tasks and obligations in your Daily Planner affects your energy. It is important to engage in self-care throughout your day, including adequate sleep, time for meals, and downtime and recreational activities in order to recharge your battery. Even when sequencing tasks at work, you can follow up a difficult task, such as working on a report, with more administrative tasks, such as responding to e-mails or phone calls that do not require as much mental energy or at least represent a shift to a different mode. Similarly, at home you may take care of various chores earlier in the evening and spend the remaining time relaxing. A useful reminder is that there are ways to make some chores more tolerable, if not enjoyable, by linking them with preferred activities for which you have more motivation. Folding laundry while watching television, or doing yard work or household chores while listening to music on an iPod are examples of coupling obligations with pleasurable activities. Moreover, these pleasant experiences combined with task completion will likely be rewarding and energizing.

Come early to get set up, about 10-15 minutes beforehand. · Warm up, 5-10 minutes, following instructor cues. · Workout portion, which could include endurance riding, hills, sprints, or technique drills. · Cool down, 5-10 minutes. · Stretch. · Clean off bike and stumble to your car, satisfied you got a killer workout.

Burke and others published a pair of studies in 2016 using a protocol dubbed “sleep low,” which involved a high-quality carbohydrate-fueled workout in the late afternoon, followed by a carbohydrate-free dinner; then, the next morning, a carbohydrate-depleted moderate workout before breakfast.38 Repeating this cycle just three times, for a total of six days, produced a 3 percent improvement in 20-kilometer cycling times.

Fitness is not just about weight or mass but strength, endurance, and flexibility.

Despite the incredibly heavy tax I impose on my body, training at times upward of twenty-five hours per week for ultra-endurance events, this type of regimen has fueled me for years, without any issues with respect to building lean muscle mass. In reality, I believe that eating plant-based has significantly enhanced my ability to expedite physiological recovery between workouts—the holy grail of athletic performance enhancement. In fact, I can honestly say that at age fifty-one I am as fit as I have ever been, even when I was a world-class-level competition swimmer at Stanford in the late 1980s.

To me, the apotheosis of what’s good and bad about contemporary exercise is the treadmill. Treadmills are incredibly useful, but they are also loud, expensive, and occasionally treacherous, and I find them boring. I sometimes use treadmills to exercise but struggle as I trudge monotonously under fluorescent lights in fetid air with no change of scene, staring at those little flashing lights informing me how far I’ve gone, at what speed, and how many calories I’ve supposedly burned. The only way I endure the tedium and discomfort of a treadmill workout is by listening to music or a podcast. What would my distant hunter-gatherer ancestors have thought of paying lots of money to suffer through needless physical activity on an annoying machine that gets us nowhere and accomplishes nothing?

A complex system benefits from not following the same practices over and over again. By enduring a little bit of stress and continuously adapting to variability in the environment, the system learns to become fitter and healthier.

This study, which we published in 2007, provided strong evidence that the brain’s attention systems can be trained. Like any form of workout, from weight lifting to cycling to learning a second language, it causes an enduring change in the system that is engaged. In this case, that change is the ability to maintain laser-sharp concentration with less and less activity in the brain’s attention circuit.

A SUMMARY OF BRAIN TRAINING FUELING GUIDELINES • Drink only when you’re thirsty during running. But don’t allow your thirst to build—that is, drink as soon as you feel the urge and as often as you feel the urge. Never force yourself to drink more than is comfortable. • Drink during runs lasting longer than one hour and during the recovery periods in shorter, high-intensity interval workouts. • When performance counts, use a sports drink instead of water. Its electrolyte content enhances hydration and its carbohydrate content provides an extra source of energy and stimulates a brain signal that boosts performance. • Consider using a carbohydrate-protein sports drink (Accelerade) instead of a conventional sports drink to promote faster recovery from workouts and perhaps greater long-term fitness gains. • Consider using water or an electrolyte-fortified water instead of a sports drink during some of your long runs to increase the physiological stress of these runs in ways that will enhance your body’s adaptations to them.

The less carbs you eat, the lower your muscle glycogen levels will be, and this means compromised performance in the gym and tough workouts (muscle endurance seems to take the biggest hit).

MSP workouts involve full-body functional movements like deadlifts, squats, leg presses, and vertical jumps. MSP workouts feature heavy weights, few reps, and more rest. By doing a succession of mini-sets, you “go max or

To conduct an MSP workout, you’ll lift your new five-rep max weight 180 pounds three or four times, then rest for ten to twenty seconds. Then you’ll do three more reps at 180, rest a bit, do two more at 180, rest a bit, do two more at 180, rest a bit, do two more at 180, rest a bit, then perhaps only muster up one rep on your final “mini-set.” That, friends, is a beautiful Maximum Sustained Power workout! In contrast, consider the typical approach of trying to execute your five-rep max deadlift weight consecutively, with no rest break. You might hit five reps the first set, another five reps on the second set, and then be crapped out like a Vegas high roller.

To do truly meaningful work, you need to get serious, focus, and go all in. Floyd Mayweather Junior is the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world. As of this writing, he is also the highest paid athlete in the world. His motto? Hard Work, Dedication. His team chants the motto as he trains. One group yells, “Hard work!” and the other responds, “Dedication!” The chants get louder and faster as Mayweather increases the speed and intensity of his workout. Mayweather knows the value of these words, and the impact they have on success. He lives by them. He endures grueling training sessions, 2-3 times per day. He often trains late into the night. He doesn’t smoke or drink alcohol—ever. Floyd Mayweather is no joke. He’s the real deal. And that’s why he’s such a big deal. He lives to box. It’s what he loves to do. His hard work and dedication have paid off, literally. Some people question Mayweather’s morals, or ridicule him for his arrogance, but it’s hard to argue with his unparalleled achievements in boxing and the relentless dedication that backs it all up. The best in the world are the best because they work their asses off doing what they were born to do. They make sacrifices. They keep grinding—and they don’t stop.[36]

So training smart, training effectively, involves cycling through the three zones in any given week or training block: 75 percent easy running, 5 to 10 percent running at target race paces, and 15 to 20 percent fast running or hill training in the third zone to spike the heart and breathing rates. In my 5-days-a-week running schedule, that cycle looks like this: On Monday, I cross-train. Tuesday, I do an easy run in zone one, then speed up to a target race pace for a mile or two of zone-two work. On Wednesday, it’s an easy zone-one run. Thursday is an intense third-zone workout with hills, speed intervals, or a combination of the two. Friday is a recovery day to give my body time to adapt. On Saturday, I do a relaxed run with perhaps another mile or two of zone-two race pace or zone-three speed. Sunday is a long, slow run. That constant cycling through the three zones—a hard day followed by an easy or rest day—gradually improves my performance in each zone and my overall fitness. But today is not about training. It’s about cranking up that treadmill yet again, pushing me to run ever faster in the third zone, so Vescovi can measure my max HR and my max VO2, the greatest amount of oxygen my heart and lungs can pump to muscles working at their peak. When I pass into this third zone, Vescovi and his team start cheering: “Great job!” “Awesome!” “Nice work.” They sound impressed. And when I am in the moment of running rather than watching myself later on film, I really think I am impressing them, that I am lighting up the computer screen with numbers they have rarely seen from a middle-aged marathoner, maybe even from an Olympian in her prime. It’s not impossible: A test of male endurance athletes in Sweden, all over the age of 80 and having 50 years of consistent training for cross-country skiing, found they had relative max VO2 values (“relative” because the person’s weight was included in the calculation) comparable to those of men half their age and 80 percent higher than their sedentary cohorts. And I am going for a high max VO2. I am hauling in air. I am running well over what should be my max HR of 170 (according to that oft-used mathematical formula, 220 − age) and way over the 162 calculated using the Gulati formula, which is considered to be more accurate for women (0.88 × age, the result of which is then subtracted from 206). Those mathematical formulas simply can’t account for individual variables and fitness levels. A more accurate way to measure max HR, other than the test I’m in the middle of, is to strap on a heart rate monitor and run four laps at a 400-meter track, starting out at a moderate pace and running faster on each lap, then running the last one full out. That should spike your heart into its maximum range. My high max HR is not surprising, since endurance runners usually develop both a higher maximum rate at peak effort and a lower rate at rest than unconditioned people. What is surprising is that as the treadmill

Step One Preparing The Mind Anytime athletes compete, they condition themselves that they may win the prize. An athlete is well self-disciplined, and temperate in all things. They tell their bodies what to do rather than letting their bodies tell them what to do. They have self-control and self-discipline in every aspect of life including their diet, in sleeping, in their behavior, in their conduct, and in their exercise. They keep a goal in mind with a plan of attack, and a determination to win. They exercise their bodies with a plan to optimize themselves in strength to overcome. For example a runner will be more concerned with leg exercises and the parts of the body which help run. They will train for endurance more so than strength, whereas some other athletes may be concerned with upper body strength only. Likewise we need to be conditioned in all things and well-disciplined to exercise ourselves towards godliness. Our target workout is not upper or lower body, but the spiritual body with soundness of mind. Without self-discipline it is impossible to memorize the amount of Scripture we should memorize. It goes without saying that mental conditioning should be a primary focus when attempting to memorize. That way, one may be optimized for memorizing the word of God. A runner exercises their legs for optimum performance and likewise we should also exercise our minds in Christ for memorizing and walking in wisdom. To make the most of memorization time one needs to be fully alert. It is best not to do it after a long day of work, an extremely stressful period of time, early in the morning when you’re groggy, or late at night before you go to bed. Rather it is better to pick a peaceful time of day during which you are most alert. Sometimes a small sip of coffee or other mental stimulant can help wake you up enough for meditation time. In order to be well conditioned mentally, first we need to understand how to be at peace within ourselves. If you’re often stressed out it can be difficult to memorize what you need to. Watch your own heart and be certain that you don’t take things too critically in life. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you take it. If you find yourself stressed out often, it may be more of how you’re handling the situation, than what’s happening to you. Although there may be something stressful happening in your life you may not need to take it so hard. In fact, the Lord calls us to always be rejoicing. As it is written, “Rejoice always” 1Th 5:16  The apostles through hardship and persecution were known to give joyous glory to the Lord. After being beaten by the council in Acts the apostles rejoiced in the Lord for the persecution they received. As we read, “…and when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.” Act 5:40-41 Likewise our temperance and spiritual state of mind can help us when it comes to time for memorizing the word of God. There are both short term and long term exercises that we should practice. In the short term we should learn to rest in Christ and release things to Him. In the long term we should grow in meekness, not taking things so critically in life that we can be at peace.

By measuring an athlete during all aspects of training, I made the important discovery that anaerobic stimulation, which can come from any anaerobic workout and any physical, chemical, or mental lifestyle stress, had the potential to interfere with the development of the aerobic system, thereby reducing endurance potential. An important aspect of building the aerobic base, I quickly learned, is that during this process, anaerobic training should be minimized—ideally eliminated—from the training schedule. And, athletes need to become more aware of how stress affects them.

The “active couch potato syndrome” is an actual observed scientific phenomenon whereby devoted fitness enthusiasts—who conduct daily workouts but live otherwise inactivity-dominant lifestyles—are not immune to the cellular dysfunction and metabolic disease patterns driven by inactivity. Statistics referenced by James Levine, MD, PhD, a Mayo Clinic researcher, international expert on obesity, and author of Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It,

Like most of the special operations community, their physical training centered on useful strength, cardiovascular endurance, and durability, which, as both of them were pushing age forty, was increasingly important. Looking like a steroid-fueled bodybuilder was not part of the equation and was a liability in terms of both physical performance and blending into civilian populations. Their workouts pulled elements from various coaches and training programs, including CrossFit, Gym Jones, and StrongFirst. The idea wasn’t to be able to compete with endurance athletes, power lifters, or alpinists, but to achieve a broad-based level of fitness that would allow them to perform well in each of those areas. After a series of warm-up exercises that most would consider a serious workout, they completed the strength and endurance Hero WOD “Murph,” named in honor of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Mike Murphy. Wearing their body armor, they started with one hundred burpees followed by four one-hundred-yard buddy carries. Then it was right into a two-mile run, one hundred pull-ups, two hundred push-ups, three hundred air squats, followed by another two-mile run. Both men powered through, thinking of the scores of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who didn’t make it home.

Autophagy supports skeletal muscle plasticity in response to endurance workouts. Exercise performed in a fasted state increases LC3B-II, enhancing the autophagic response.

This single exercise, when repeated enough, provides huge benefits in fat loss, muscle gain and cardiovascular conditioning.  Perhaps more than any other exercise, the kettlebell swing helps you slim down, pack on muscle and give your heart a healthy workout. This is why an entire book is devoted to it and to helping you do the swings that will revolutionize your fitness, strength and endurance.

It’s true that low rep workouts, consisting of powerful and explosive movements, will build more size (but not less definition) than high rep workouts, because the “fast twitch” muscle fibers required in explosive movements are much larger than “slow twitch” fibers required for more enduring tasks. But really, for mass, wouldn’t you want to recruit all possible muscle fibers and not just the fast twitch? Likewise, for “definition”–that is, losing body fat so the striations in your muscles show more–wouldn’t you want to recruit all possible muscle fibers, especially since the number one factor affecting our resting metabolic rate, and thus fat loss, is muscle mass? The only thing you should alter depending on your goal–whether it’s to tone or bulk up–is nutrition.

Like most of the special operations community, their physical training centered on useful strength, cardiovascular endurance, and durability, which, as both of them were pushing age forty, was increasingly important. Looking like a steroid-fueled bodybuilder was not part of the equation and was a liability in terms of both physical performance and blending into civilian populations. Their workouts pulled elements from various coaches and training programs, including CrossFit, Gym Jones, and StrongFirst.

We hear all the time about how important it is to be physically fit. Our society has become ultra-focused on fitness and health. Our Facebook feeds are filled with seven-minute workouts. There are YouTube videos galore on seven days to rock-hard abs. The radio plays ads to lose ten pounds in ten days, but only if you call in the next ten minutes. Even the president told us to be physically fit. Remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Test in elementary school? A quick shuttle run, the dreaded flexed arm hang. It tested strength, endurance, flexibility, and agility. All different ways to prove we were physically fit. Or not. As a matter of fact, Americans now spend more on fitness than on college tuition.1 Over a lifetime, the average American spends more than $100,000 on things like gym memberships, supplements, exercise equipment, and personal training.2 Seems shocking, right? But where are the training programs for the thoughts in your head? Those thoughts that tell you that you have no choices when bad things happen. Those thoughts that try to convince you everything is out of your control in difficult situations. Where do you go if you want to be Thoughtfully Fit? Right here in this book.

Although training intensity can be reduced with lighter weights, especially at first, for full strength and endurance benefits you should eventually be swinging a fairly heavy weight for your minute and a half mini-workouts.

To prove it, Marcora and his colleagues tested a simple self-talk intervention—precisely the approach my teammates and I had laughed at two decades earlier. They had twenty-four volunteers complete a cycling test to exhaustion, then gave half of them some simple guidance on how to use positive self-talk before another cycling test two weeks later. The self-talk group learned to use certain phrases early on (“feeling good!”) and others later in a race or workout (“push through this!”), and practiced using the phrases during training to figure out which ones felt most comfortable and effective. Sure enough, in the second cycling test, the self-talk group lasted 18 percent longer than the control group, and their rating of perceived exertion climbed more slowly throughout the test. Just like a smile or frown, the words in your head have the power to influence the very feelings they’re supposed to reflect.

The best way to decide how much emphasis you still need to place on basic aerobic fitness versus adding more high-intensity endurance training is to refer back to the Ten Percent Test (see page 91). If the difference between your AeT and LT (in terms of heart rate) is 10 percent or less, you should include up to two weekly high-intensity aerobic endurance sessions in your Base Period. If your AeT-to-LT spread is greater than 10 percent, delay the introduction of Zone 3 workouts and limit the higher-intensity workouts to no more than once a week.

Unless you are training to be competitive in elite endurance sports like cycling, swimming, running, triathlon, or cross-country skiing, a single workout per week in this zone will generally suffice.

One study in particular demonstrated that a 30-minute sauna session two times a week for three weeks POST workout, increased the time that it took for study participants to run until exhaustion by 32% compared to baseline. This 32% increase in endurance was accompanied by a 7.1% increase in plasma volume and 3.5% increase in red blood cell count. 32% is a massive increase in performance and something that any endurance athlete would be foolish to ignore.

The principles behind the 4 minute workout and how you can start using them right now to build your strength and endurance.

I’m taking a shower,” he announces, not sparing me a glance as he moves past me and into the bathroom. This is way above my pay grade. I don’t possess the necessary training to make sense of this behavior. Twenty minutes later, I’m tucked into the cozy bed, reading glasses on, Delia’s latest manuscript on Dane’s iPad when he steps out of the bathroom. Aaaand I instantly turn into Joan of Arc, burned at the stake. Except the heat doesn’t start at my feet. Noooo. It starts between my legs and spreads forth. By the time it reaches my face, there’s a veil of sweat above my lips. Not attractive. A wall of finely sculpted flesh walks further into the room with only a scrap of towel to hide the extra good parts. There’s so much razzle dazzle to take in my mind locks onto one area. His abdominal muscles. Mother of gee oh dee, what kind of torture must one endure to get those? So cut they don’t even look real. Mentally, I’m poking them with my index finger to see if they poke back. Until something intrudes in the periphery of my vision. South of these spectacular ab muscles, the towel wrapped around his waist starts to rise. That’s when I hear a snapping of fingers. A large hand immediately comes into view and more snapping of fingers. “Eyes up, Shorty. Or you’ll get more of a show than you bargained for.” My gaze makes a swift trip back up to his face. His mouth is twisted in a grimace and his eyebrow arched. He’s not happy I was looking…whatever. “Don’t look so scared. I pinky promise not to molest you.” His eyes widen while his lips thin. “You know what, it’s still early. I’m gonna get a workout in. I’ll be back later.” A workout? At 9 p.m.? He doesn’t even wait for me to respond. He grabs his clothes in a hurry, and a moment later he’s gone. I know I don’t have a ton of experience with men but this can’t be normal behavior. This has got to be far from normal behavior.

Tricia thought about all those training runs, those miserable, hot steamy miles and hills in August in the Berkshires with the team. Or the frigid early - morning speed workouts in January on the track in New Haven. All this time, she'd thought it was about running, but it was really about preparing her for the last 17 minutes and the next few hours of pain, when she had to remain focused long enough to leave work, go to her apartment and pack a few things, and then get on the train out to Southport. This was the moment where developing all that endurance and a high pain threshold finally paid off.

One study has demonstrated that a 30-minute sauna session twice a week for 3 weeks post-workout increased the time it took for study participants to run until exhaustion by 32% compared to baseline. The 32% increase in running endurance found in this particular study was accompanied by a 7.1% increase in plasma volume and 3.5% increase in red blood cell count.

Training principles You can improve your muscle strength by training, but there are principles to do it efficiently. Let's introduce them here. ①        Overload principle: Muscle strength will not improve unless the load is higher than the muscle strength normally used. You need a load that stimulates the function you want to improve. ②        Frequency principle: There are conditions for the time and frequency of exercise, and it is desirable to do it 3 to 5 times / week with an appropriate rest. ③        Principle of peculiarity：In order to get the training effect, you need to train the most suitable for the desired result. For example, if you want to train your arms, you have to train your arms. ④        Principle of individuality: Ability varies from individual to individual. It is necessary to think about the content of exercise each time according to your own physical strength. ⑤        Principle of graduality: As the training continues, the element of physical fitness improves, so it is necessary to adjust the amount of exercise and load according to the improvement of physical fitness. ⑥        Principle of continuity: Sustaining exercise and long-term workouts are important for training to be effective.On the contrary, if you do not continue, the training effect will be impaired. ⑦        Principle of totality: It is important to improve basic physical strength by improving various physical strength factors such as endurance, muscle strength, and flexibility in a well-balanced manner. It is also not good to be biased only by muscle training. ⑧        Principle of awareness: By understanding the effect and purpose of the training, the training effect can be further enhanced.

I fell into climbing, so to speak, a willy-nilly response to a crushing bout of depression that began in my mid-thirties. The disorder reduced my chronic low self-regard to a bottomless pit of despair and misery. I recoiled from myself and my life, and came very close to suicide. Then, salvation. On a family vacation in Colorado, I discovered the rigors and rewards of mountain climbing, and gradually came to see the sport as my avenue of escape. I found that a punishing workout regimen held back the darkness for hours each day. Blessed surcease. I also gained hard muscle and vastly improved my endurance, two novel sources of pride.

During your first week as a runner, you might run thirty second intervals interspersed with ninety seconds of walking, but after a few workouts, you’ll realize you can double that time to a full minute—a 100% increase in performance. A week or two later you’re running two or three minutes at a time, doubling your endurance yet again.