4 on - 4 off x 4 VO2 max workout

Peter Attia sugests one workout a week being at VO2 max, with the rest of the workouts building out a solid aerobic base.   The workout he suggests for the hard one is 4 minutes on, 4 minutes off, 4 times. This is something I haven't done in years, and am a little nervous about  (as in nervous enough to want to do this in an environment with an automatic external defibrillator). 

He describes this a little bit like I used to think of a 2000m test on an erg, but condensed.  The first minute is relatively easy, if it's not, you've gone out too hard and are going to blow.  Minutes 2 and 3 are really uncomfortable, and you only get through minute 4 because its the last minute and you can go for broke.  I would suggest doing negative splits here, where you get progressively faster, but he admits that he is pretty much universally positive splitting.

The rule Attia uses is the 80/20 rule, so if you are going to do 5 workouts in a week, 4 of them (80%) ought to be base training, and 1 of them (20%) ought to be as I described above.

He also notes that he warms up significantly before doing this workout.   I could see doing VO2 max after a full base training workout as a warmup.

I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice... I'm also kind of OK with dying on a treadmill as a honorable end.   I might strongly consider actually asking my doctor before doing this.  There is something called a cardiac stress test which would get you up to this level of exertion in a controlled way in a medical environment where a resuscitation team was nearby.

The final note is that I'd be tempted to start slow, like wearing a heart rate monitor play with where you are in the zones.  Don't go for broke (dead?) all at once on the first interval.

What are the zones on a Polar heart rate monitor?

 From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPFq9EpovNw

Heart rate training and after-workout stretching/cool-down data.

 My temptation with a heart rate watch is to stop the tracking immediately after I stop the activity and then do my stretching / cool-down.  The problem with this approach is that the data around how quickly the heart rate comes back down during the cooldown is useful data.

It's obvious looking at a longitudinal heart rate graph where the cool-down is, so including the cool-down in the data doesn't really meaningfully pollute the data in any way.  Also, my cool downs tend to be of a fixed 5 or 10 minute duration.  

The only problem with doing this is the stretching time is included in the volume calculation for the week.  Honestly, if getting some credit for actually stretching motivates me to stretch, I'm OK with the volume number being inflated by 5-10 minutes per session.  Again, for any individual workout, it's obvious where the work was done, and where I was cooling down.

Another way to look at this data is in a weekly or monthly report from Polar Flow or your tracker's software.  Here I can see the number of minutes total in various heart rate zones.  Looking at the total minutes in the green 70-80% zone, and the blue 60-70% zone gives me a good idea of where I am, and where I want to be for the week.  Looking at these numbers tends to leave out the stretching, even if I don't shut off the watch immediately after the actual work is done.

Looking at total min in zone 2-4 in Polar Flow's reports excludes most of the stretching.

A Concept2 RowErg might be too loud for a 1 bedroom apartment.

 https://youtu.be/NHlguKhStsA?si=GuWBNBzPEzycwdum&t=444

Whether it is actually too loud, or whether it would just be a nagging sense of guilt for disturbing neighbors, either way it's not likely that I'd buy one of these for my current living situation.

My 2023 Fitness Infographic

 

There is a lot of room for improvement in my workout schedule.  There were a couple of 2-month long periods where I was exercising pretty regularly, but there are also intervening months where I am doing nothing.  I'm not 100% sure this log represents all activity, but it's reasonably accurate.

A pathological definition of "whole grain"

 

The video above is (or was at the time of writing this piece) "SOFT and FLUFFY 100% Whole Grain Biscuits | Jill Winger Prairie Homestead Biscuits for Whole Grains". In the video, it quickly becomes clear that what Jill means by "whole grain" is the whole pulverized flour that comes from milling wheat berries.  

I believe this is the definition that a lot of industrial bakers use too.  On the one hand, this process might include some phytonutrients that you would otherwise lose by throwing out the bran of the wheat berry.  On the other, the process of pulverizing the berry into flour makes the flour digest rapidly into blood sugar.

To my knowledge, you need flour to make baked goods.  For me, I define "whole grain" to mean the literal whole grain, unpulverized and unfiltered.   You cook and eat these foods like rice or pasta.  So definitionally, there is no such thing as whole grain bread.  Whole grain bread is essentially white bread with a little coloring from the bran and germ, and marginal nutrients from the bran and germ, mixed in. According to Andrew Weil MD, whole wheat bread has the same glycemic index as white bread, because of this pulverization process. 

From "What is a whole grain" by Academy of nutrition and dietetics.

When someone says, "you shouldn't cut out whole groups of macronutrients"...

 There are two issues with that criticism of a low-carb diet:

1) Flour and whole grains don't have the same effect, but whole grains are much scarcer in the modern food environment.

Joe Rogan joked, "if your trainer is telling you to eat bread, find a different trainer.  That sh*t is terrible for you."

To bake wheat into bread, the wheat has to be pulverized into flour.  Bread made out of truly whole grain would be all but inedible.  What modern industrial bakers call "whole wheat bread" is just white bread with a little bit of the pulverized bran mixed in.  Often it's not even that, it's just white bread with caramel coloring.

Flour has a terrible effect on the body.  The flour becomes simple sugar very quickly in the body, causing a dramatic rise in blood sugar, with all of its downstream problems.  So if someone is essentially saying "you can't cut out carbs entirely", they might be right, but they don't, or shouldn't mean you should eat flour.   Good carbs are from green leafy vegetables, and depending on carb-tolerance fruit, beans, and whole grains.  The problem is that, with whole grains in particular, these foods are much scarcer in the modern food environment.   When was the last time you saw farro on the menu at a restaurant?

2) People have differing levels of carb-tolerance and blood sugar issues.

As I said above, flour raises blood sugar.   It's not only flour though.  A cup of brown rice still has a significant amount of sugar bound together in its carbohydrate content.  Parroting Virta Health's youtube channel here: someone who is diabetic, or pre-diabetic, probably (on an individual basis) shouldn't be eating even these complex carbs.

Even if you don't have an issue with being overfat, have high blood sugar, abnormal lipids, or high blood pressure, one can still make the argument that, at the very least, it's not a good idea to eat a lot of processed flour as this may, over time, lead to those very conditions.

Conclusion

The person giving this advice might not have the same carb-tolerance as you do.  They might be naturally lean, have normal blood sugar....etc.  For them, eating carbohydrates, maybe even eating processed flour, doesn't seem like a problem.  For me though, with a current BMI of 42, a fasting blood sugar of 105, and high LDL cholesterol, it's a very different story.

Often, if the person giving this advice means "flour" when they argue to add carbohydrates to the diet, there is a pretty cogent argument that they are just plain wrong.  If they are one of the truly exceptional people that eats a lot of actual whole grain, and that's what they mean when they argue for adding carbohydrates, they might be more correct, but it depends on your level of carb-tolerance and your current health situation.

I eat a low-carb diet, but I also eat a lot of green leafy vegetables that grow above ground.  I don't currently eat beans or whole grains.  On this diet, I have had good success with weight loss, how I feel day-to-day, and motivation to make other health changes like adding more exercise.   I might experiment with more liberal carbs in my diet periodically as a way to stay motivated to largely eat low-carb, and I may liberalize my diet as my weight goes down.  For now though, I eat low-carb (+ veggies), and I especially don't eat much, if any flour.

I would love to learn how to prepare (actual) whole grains.

 

If I was going to move from a keto / low-carb diet like a diet inspired by the writing of Gary Taubes, to a slow-carb, largely plant-based diet as inspired by the writing of Walter Willett, one of the main changes I would have to make is to bring on much, much more whole grain.

I think a mistake a lot of people make is rooted in the fact that industrial bread bakers haven't been entirely honest in labeling.   The brown-colored "whole wheat" bread that you see in most markets categorically isn't made of whole grain. If something is made of whole grain, you will actually be able to see the whole grain.

Here are some examples of whole grain (from the article '9 of the Healthiest Whole Grains to Help You Eat More Fiber' by Eating Healthy:

1. Bulgar
2. Brown Rice
3. Oats
4. Farro
5. Teff
6. Sorghum
7. Quinoa
8. Buckwheat

Here's the problem though - I think most people just fundamentally don't have experience in preparing whole grains.  I would absolutely love to take an in-person cooking class entirely focused on making healthful and tasty whole grains.

Referencing the Virta material, the decision about whether to shift from the one diet to the other depends entirely on the individuals carbohydrate tolerance.  I universally think shifting from a well formulated keto diet back to the SAD (Standard American Diet) is a bad idea.  You don't want to start eating bread, and pizza, and pasta, and potatoes.  However, it would be fun to experiment with whether shifting some calories to actual whole grain allowed me either to keep losing weight, or to at least maintain.

That's at the crux of Willet's argument for whole grain:  If you are metabolically healthy, and don't have insulin resistance or obesity, it might be a no-brainer to eat a largely plant-based diet in the way that he describes.  However, that's not most Americans.

Video on the types of whole grain

Video on cooking whole grain - the "pasta method" doesn't seem that scary.

Dealing with belly while rowing

 

The TLDR of this video is that rather than splay your knees out, or some other pathological adaptation, it is better to just shorten up the stroke, and not go to full compression.  Body preparation out of the finish is key, you don't want to stress your lower back.

If you look at elite rowers sprinting on the erg, this is not all that different than the stroke that they do.

Cam Buchan near the catch on a sprint workout, notice that he is not fully compressed.

Photo Check in, 280lbs, Early February 2024, BMI of about 43

 

Sanity on the question of low-carb and cholesterol...

 

Voice of sanity on fruit.

 The Virta Health youtube channel is a goldmine. https://www.youtube.com/@VirtaHealth

Gary Taubes Interview

 

Everything that is old is new again.  I got a lot out of this interview with Gary Taubes about Keto.  In it he addresses (among other things) my concern about the difference between clinically keto, and just low carb.