Dr. Andy Galpin

This could be a combination of 30 seconds of maximal exercise, resting 30 seconds, and repeating that anywhere between like 4 and 12 times can equally improve VO2 max, if not greater and more so than your steady state exercise.

There's a lot more context that go into that.

It's not necessarily meaning high intensity is better.

There are some significant downsides and concerns with only doing high intensity exercise.

Another thing I've changed my opinion on.

And so I think we want to use high intensity exercise.

There's clear benefit there.

It's fundamentally different though than low intensity exercise.

So we're challenging a different part of the system, which is why I am going to argue you should be incorporating both most of the time.

It doesn't have to be always in all of your training, but you wouldn't want to leave either one of these things entirely off if the pure goal here is to maximize VO2.

The reason is when you do something at a higher intensity, the point of failure in the tissue becomes different.

So extending my ability to move at a lower or moderate intensity for a long period of time is challenging different aspects than it is when I ask it to introduce a tremendous amount of fatigue.

So I'm now into anaerobic metabolism when I'm going really hard and really fast.

I can't use oxygen.

So I'm building up a ton of byproducts.

pH is being disturbed.

Potential damage is happening.

Other things are occurring.

CO2 is getting extremely high.

And so enhancing my ability to deal with that is a similar thing in terms of increasing mitochondria biogenesis.