Dr. Andy Galpin

We don't really see as much overtraining or non-functional overreaching, elevations in respiratory heart rate, other signs of

Hunger, fatigue, not wanting to train, things like that doesn't really happen when we spend time at lower intensities.

Higher intensities are phenomenal, really, really, really time efficient, but they've got consequences as well.

They're going to be entirely or mostly anaerobic, which is okay too, because you'll still use the aerobic side of the equation to recover from that.

So super important.

But there's a price to be paid there.

People can run into problems and you're more likely to see issues with those metrics I just described if you're doing too much intensity too often, especially if you're combining this with a normal stressful life.

So you're doing this kind of exercise.

Then you're going right back into your day job.

You're having difficult meetings, even if they're exciting and happy meetings, you're thinking hard, you're working, you're getting back to fourth and you're in a kind of a long, high stress environment all day.

Really, really challenging on the system to be in that high of a stress at all times.

So other ways you can mitigate that, we can talk about those in future episodes.

But just wanted to say, while high intensity exercise is very time efficient, it's not necessarily a free pass either.

Low intensity is not a free pass either.

It's going to leave things on the table that you're missing.

So to round all that up, again, I would recommend a combination of lower intensity, moderate intensity, and high intensity training.

The mode of the exercise in terms of what you choose, bicycle, kettlebells, circuit training, it's entirely up to you.

Spin class, whatever you'd like to do.

Frequency can be as high or as low as you'd like.

There are plenty of studies showing kind of the higher intensity stuff done two to three times per week can improve VO2 max.