High Resistance Intervals: Building Power Endurance
Why use High Resistance/Alactic intervals and what makes them different from other protocols?
Below is an excerpt from the future book: Answering the Call: Proper Physical Training for Police and Military in the 21st Century. In some of the programming I outline in the book, I go over the use of something called High Resistance Intervals, or in other circles known as Alactic training. Although this was pulled from the “Day to Day Training of a Combat Arms Soldier” section, this is 100% applicable to police. This will be a fixture in the future phase II of the 20 minute workout for law enforcement.
Techniques/programming for the “Day to Day Training of a Combat Arms Soldier.”
From Phase II of the 12 week program:
We introduce something called “High Resistance Intervals” which is in Joel Jamieson’s book, The Ultimate Guide to MMA Conditioning. I read it years ago and kind of blew it off at the time. Then when Craig Weller added it into my preparation I saw the value in it. Like most things in strength and conditioning it's already been invented, but suddenly it clicks...you just understand it by seeing it in application or written in a certain way. For me, despite doing something like this since I played high school football (running hills) I was too much of a simpleton to see the value.
In summation, it is a form of interval training where one completes a short burst of around 5-15 seconds of resisted/explosive work followed by recovery, and then repeating. Remember, I fell into the intensity camp for years and didn’t see the value in resting and then repeating. That is the difference here. You are doing an interval, but then allowing for recovery.
That is typically what separates Glycolitic or Lactic intervals and Alactic training, or whatever people are calling it these days. Thankfully, guys like Pavel Tsatsouline come along and reinvent something that already existed and call it something that registers with people like “anti-glycolitic training”. I am not hating on the man at all as his stuff is awesome. However, the reality is that is a big piece of strength and conditioning. Everybody borrows from each other or in some cases just rediscovers something. Myself Included.
As an example these can be done pushing a heavy sled for 10-15 seconds, resting for around a minute, and then going again. Each rep should have some power, but as you fatigue it will drop a bit. If power is totally gone, end the session for the day or try rest a bit longer. While wearing a heart rate monitor, push the sled, rest, wait until your heart rate comes down to 130-140 bpm and then go again until hitting your rep total. A good way to measure progress is if you keep the volume the same, but just measure the total time it takes to complete the workout. You should watch your rest periods decrease as you gain more fitness. Ten to fifteen sets of sled pushes that originally took you 20 minutes to do will in time take you 15 minutes to complete. I’d call that a win. Along the way you also improved your ability to repeat bouts of power while STAYING in the aerobic zone.
Why am I putting emphasis on this? You aren’t a track and field athlete. You are a soldier. You need to be able to repeat hard bouts of effort and then recover and go again. It's not uncommon for the infantry soldier to have to move under load for long low intensity periods and then all of a sudden sprint, stop, hop a wall, then repeat it again. For those of you that have been initiated through basic infantry training I am sure you famously remember the saying as you bound: “I am up, he sees me! I am down.” Often this becomes somewhat of an HRI interval. Along the same lines if you think urban combat isn’t going to be a huge piece of whatever the next conflict is I would argue you would be sorely mistaken (See: Ukraine). This all still applies in modern combat, no matter how much technology improves there will always be the last 100 yards.
The longer you can teach yourself to stay aerobic (or oxidative for the fancy) the less you’ll eat into your finite energy systems and the longer you can go. HICT works on this quality as well, just differently. As HICT will have you generating power for longer sustained periods of time while staying aerobic.
One last thing before getting to the program. I use a sled as an example because I love using sleds. It's damn near impossible to hurt yourself. It’s low impact and you can really load them up. They have high versatility as you can push, pull, low push, squat and pull, laterally pull, etc. You can even do upper body variations as well. You can even do heavy marches with the implement, making it even more low impact. All of these examples come without a ton of eccentric loading that usually lends itself to more soreness. Soreness is fine, but not what I would want for this phase for where it is placed in the training week.
I know everyone does not have a sled. Other examples of this can be Hill sprints, car pushes, medball slams, KB swings (lighter and explosive), bike intervals (cranking the resistance up during each rep), Rogue ECHO bike or Assault bike intervals, etc.
Just follow the rule...5-15 seconds of RESISTED work followed with recovery, and then repeat. If your intervals are a little less because you have a small hill or whatever...that is OK...just get the work in.
Any questions please feel free to reach out: info@longtermtraining.com.