Exercise does so many amazing things for the human body but is there a specific form of
exercise that is best and that all of us should be doing? 'Cuz there's so many different forms
of exercise for us to choose from; things like strength training, endurance activities
like biking or cycling, yoga, or even a specific sport. So, in today's video, we're going to
talk about a specific type of exercise that all of us should be thinking about incorporating
into our routines and of course, discuss the specific health and fitness benefits, how
to incorporate it into weekly routine as well as talk about the positive correlation to
aging and longevity. The only problem is, this type of exercise can be a little bit
of a pain in the gluteus maximus to complete, both literally and figuratively.
Well, try to calm down with the shameless anatomy jokes so that we can jump right into
this exercise and all the relevant anatomical awesomeness.
[Intro]
So, the type of exercise we're going to discuss is mostly going to focus on taking this structure
to red line or near red line and as you can see, this is a real human heart and what I
mean by taking it to red line or near red line is essentially, we're going to work the
heart at maximum or near maximum capacity and we are obviously going to talk about why
this is important to all of us and not just specific types of athletes and in order to
help us with this, we need to talk about oxygen and how efficiently and effectively a person
takes oxygen from surrounding air and gets it into the muscles that are being worked
during exercise is a huge influencer on the overall fitness of a person, but taking that
oxygen from the air and into that working skeletal muscle takes multiple steps and you
can think about it from this perspective. Some of those steps in the process could be
considered bottlenecks or limiting the amount of oxygen that can get to that muscle tissue
but many of these areas or steps can be improved on with exercise. So, let's take a look at
some of these areas as we bring oxygen into the body.
As we breathe in air and therefore oxygen, that air will either enter into the nasal
cavity or the oral cavity and then back to the pharynx which is the throat. The air will
then move down into the trachea which is often referred to as the windpipe and then will
be distributed into the right and left lungs.
What's interesting about all this is that the lungs are rarely the limitation in this
process and that can often surprise people but what we mean by this is that the lungs
are very well built. Or more than sufficient from say like the volume, size, or capacity
perspective. In other words, the lungs are big enough or large enough to get enough air
into them but when it comes to this process of exchanging or transferring the oxygen from
the lung tissue into the bloodstream, specifically into these pulmonary capillaries that penetrate
through the lungs, that can be improved upon.
Now, keep in mind capillaries because this will come up again - capillaries are just
tiny little exchange vessels that for exchange from a tissue in the bloodstream and in this
case, oxygen moving from the lungs into the bloodstream and now oxygenating that blood.
The oxygenated blood will then leave the lungs and go directly to the heart and the heart
will pump this blood throughout the body and the tissues that we're most concerned about
getting this oxygenated blood in this case are those working or exercising skeletal muscles
and they'll get this blood through various arteries that are distributed throughout the
body which will eventually flow into the capillaries within the muscle tissue.
That oxygen then move from the capillaries and into the muscle cells and those muscle
cells can utilize that oxygen to create energy, specifically the energy currency of our cells
called ATP or Adenosine Triphosphate but what along this process could we improve upon?
Well we could increase the number of capillaries which would increase the amount of blood and
therefore the potential for exchanging oxygen between the tissues that we just looked at.
We could also make the muscle cells even more efficient - make it so that the muscles utilize
the oxygen more effectively as well as other energy sources like lipids or fats but all
of us have a pretty good idea that one of the biggest players in all this is the actual
pump or heart itself.
We could increase the capillaries as much as we wanted. We could have the most efficient
muscles ever, but if we don't have a powerful, effective pump, it's not going to mean much.
So, how do we strengthen this heart?
Before we talk about the specifics of strengthening the heart, let's also take a second to think
about and consider improving our flexibility by saying thank you to the sponsor of today's
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Program". You can it immediately at yogabody.com/IHA. Increasing the strength of the heart and improving
the amount of blood that it can pump can technically occur with almost any form of exercise.
Now, before you start saying, "Wait a minute, Jonathan, you've been strongly implying that
a specific type of exercise is going to be good for us in increasing the strength of
the heart'. Let me explain a couple things first. Say you were to do steady state cardio
on a bike or on a jog and you were to do this at a light or moderate intensity - would you
see improve in strength of the heart and its ability to pump blood? Absolutely but let's
take this a little further and compare it to say like strength training a skeletal muscle.
Let's say you wanted to improve the strength of your quads through squatting and during
the squatting exercises you used about 60% of your one rep max. Your one rep max being
the maximum amount of weight that you could lift through one repetition and in this case
the squat.
So, if you use 60% of your one rep max, would you see some strength benefits or strength
gains? Yeah, to a certain degree, you would but would you be leaving a lot on the table?
Absolutely. If you talk to any powerlifter or anybody who's concerned about gaining strength,
they don't work at 60% of their one-rep max. They're working at say like 80 to 90% and
even 90 to a 100 percent of their one-rep max during certain phases of their training
program.
Now, take that analogy back to the heart. If you were to only work the heart at 60%
of its capacity, you'd be leaving strength gains or physiological adaptations that you
can only get if you are to work the hard at say like it's 90 to 100% of its capacity.
So, what types of exercise do we need to do with this? Obviously we're going to need to
increase the intensity and the best way to do this is through high intensity intervals
and sometimes people refer to this as VO₂ max training.
Let's start with what constitutes a high intensity interval. These are obviously going to be
highly intense bouts or forms of exercise that intervals that last anywhere from two
to 6 minutes. Some people will do shorter intervals like 30 to 90 seconds and increase
the number of reps but I like to keep mine in that two to four-minute range.
Regardless, whatever time you pick, you're going to stick with that and then you'll pick
some form of training modality or exercise. You could say like getting on a bike, running
on a treadmill, a stair master, a rower, or you could be running on a track or find a
hill to run up. The key is that you're going to go full bore during that time. Say again,
that's 2 minutes - you're going to go as hard as you can for that two-minute period and
you'll get better at pacing yourself and figuring out the pacing as you do this more frequently
but the key is that you don't have much left in the tank at the end of that time.
If you pick a two-minute interval, you wouldn't want to be able to have enough left in the
tank that you could go for three minutes if that makes sense. So, you'll do that, you'll
rest for about the same amount of time that you pick. So, it's a one-to-one work-to-rest
ratio. If you pick 2 minutes, you'll rest 2 minutes and then you'll do it again for
about a total of four to six times and at the end of this, you will definitely be blowing
for air and feel some of those physiological responses with the pump that we've been talking
about.
The heart will definitely be contracting at its full force and touching or getting close
to touching red line and what I mean by red line is - the goal here is to essentially
get to max heart rate or close to touching max heart rate and max heart rate, there's
a kind of a crewed generalized calculation of 220 minus your age and if you do this right,
at the end of this, at some point, you will get close to your max heart rate.
You might see that it's a little bit higher than this estimate of 220 minus your age or
maybe even a little bit lower or you might see that it's right on. So, how often should
we be doing these high-intensity intervals? You can see benefits from doing them every
other week but ideally, more like once a week.
Most of us won't need to do more than that and still be able to get the majority of the
benefits of this type of training and that's probably a good thing because if you haven't
noticed or maybe you've even participated in these before, they're hard and not necessarily
the most fun type of exercise and can be associated with a little bit of - well, a lot of bit
of discomfort but once you're done, you feel great but while you're doing them, you sometimes
will think "This is the stupidest thing I've done all week" but again, we'll focus on how
we'll feel afterwards as well as focus on these amazing physiological adaptations that
will occur but before we talk about those physiological adaptations, I do need to say
probably not the wisest thing to go from couch straight to high intensity intervals.
You want to build up your baseline fitness or your aerobic base and that could be done
through generalized strength training as well as some steady state light to moderate intensity
of cardiovascular training and then you can start incorporating these high intensity intervals
into your routine.
Now, as far as these physiological adaptations, one of the greatest physiological adaptations
that occurs is an increase in cardiac output. Cardiac output is the amount of blood pumped
out of the heart per minute and this is a product of what's called Stroke Volume and
Heart Rate. So, stroke volume times heart rate. We have a pretty good idea of what heart
rate is - number of heartbeats that occur per minute but stroke volume is the volume
or the amount of blood that's pumped out of this chamber called the left ventricle per
beat. So, the amount of blood pumped out of the left ventricle each beat is that stroke
volume.
Now, as far as maximum heart rate, we don't have a lot of control what that's going to
be. That's a factor of genetics or influence by genetics as well as age but our stroke
volume, we definitely can improve upon through this high-intensity form of exercise that
we've been talking about.
This myocardium which is the heart muscle itself will enlarge and become stronger and
therefore, the heart can contract more forcefully each beat. Also, the chambers of the heart
can start to accommodate a greater volume or a higher amount of blood within them.
So, put those two things together. I've got the heart that can now fill with more blood
and also contract more forcefully, you can see how that could eject a higher amount of
blood and therefore increase that cardiac output but how much are we talking? How much
can we really increase the cardiac output?
Well, if you take someone who is not very well trained but has a normal functioning
heart and you get them to exercise, you'll see that their cardiac output is anywhere
from 13 to 15 liters per minute but if you compare that to the elite endurance athletes,
their cardiac output is anywhere from 30 to 40 liters per minute. That's crazy and awesome
to think about that a human could potentially more than double their cardiac output through
specific types of training and because of this increased cardiac output, things like
resting heart rate will improve or go down because the heart is more efficient at pumping
blood so it doesn't need as many beats per minute to eject or pump out the same volume
of blood.
Some other physiological adaptations that occur from this high-intensity training are
things like improved endothelial health. The endothelium is just the inside lining of your
blood vessels. You also see increased efficiency of the mitochondria within the muscle tissue
and something that we mentioned earlier, we can increase the number of capillaries going
to the muscle tissue therefore increasing the volume of blood to those tissues as well
as making that exchange of oxygen more efficient.
So, what does this high intensity interval training and the physiological adaptations
that come with it have to do with something I mentioned earlier VO₂ max? Well, if we
break down that term, V stands for Volume, O₂ stands for oxygen and Max for maximum.
So, the maximum oxygen consumption. Think of this as like a measure of the size of your
aerobic engine - how much oxygen can you bring into the body, process and utilize primarily
in that skeletal muscle tissue per given amount of time. Usually it's measured per minute.
So, if we were to take you and do a VO₂ max test on you - we'd put a mask on you,
we'd get you on a treadmill or a bike and we gradually increase the intensity until
you failed. So, we're getting to maximum work there and eventually, you just give up because
you can't go any further.
During that time, there are pieces of information that will be gathered by this test, one of
which is the maximum amount of oxygen that you could consume in a minute and it will
tell you at what point of the test that you got to that maximum amount of oxygen consumption
and for round numbers, let's say, you got a result of 3.5 liters per minute was the
maximum amount of oxygen that you could consume per minute. Now, they will further calculate
that into milliliters and per body weight but for round numbers, let's just stick with
this and let's say you decided I'm going to do some high intensity interval training and
continue my training and try to increase my VO₂ max and you go back months later and
you've improved it to 3.75 liters per minute.
That would mean that you can now process and utilize more oxygen and therefore kind of
having a bigger aerobic machine. Therefore, you're having increased fitness and you can
do more work. Now, we should probably answer a pretty important question - is high-intensity
interval training the only way to improve VO₂ max and the answer is no. You can actually
improve VO₂ max by doing steady state cardio at a moderate intensity. What the endurance
world may refer to as say zone 2 training but again, if we go back to that analogy of
the person squatting and only using 60% of their one-rep max, yes, they'll see some improvements
in strength but again, they will be leaving a lot of potential strength gains and maximum
potential for strength gains on the table if they don't increase the weight or the intensity.
Same idea is if somebody only participates in that moderate steady state cardio. You'll
see some improvements in VO₂ max but you will definitely not be able to maximize the
improvements as you would if you included high-intensity interval training because again,
VO₂ max occur at the top end when you're really working hard.
So, if you don't go there, you're not going to maximize your ability to improve that quality
and the final question we have to answer is, you may still be thinking, "Well, why should
I do this high-intensity exercise?" Yes, we did talk about these physiological benefits
that occur but one, it kind of sucks to do. Two, you just mentioned that I can get some
of the benefits by doing a lower level of intensity of exercise and three, I don't really
operate at that high level of intensity in my daily life. Maybe you're not a person that's
racing marathons or you're not playing high-intensity sports and you just don't typically go there.
Well, let me give you some ideas of why I think it could be beneficial. Let's say you
have a little kid or a little toddler that's like a little ninja and they're able to escape
from everywhere and they escape from the house and dart towards a busy road. You have to
sprint after them, swoop them up, and run them back or maybe that same ninja-like child
is being difficult in the airport. You forgot your stroller, they refuse to walk, you're
late for your flight, you have to pick them up, pick up your luggage, and dart for that
gate to make your flight on time.
Now, if these kid analogies aren't enough for you, we could also tell you this, VO₂
max is highly correlated with longevity and what this means is that VO₂ max fitness
has a strong relationship with mortality risk or risk of death as VO₂ max improves mortality
risk or that risk of death tends to decline and I was introduced to a really cool research
study actually on another YouTube channel, Peter Atia - if you haven't heard that channel
check it out. He does a lot of awesome videos on longevity, health and fitness but again
I was introduced to this research study from there and I'll include it in our description
as well but I'll just summarize some of the key important points.
This was a large study done with a large group of people and the average age of the person
in the study was 53 or around 53 and they tested everyone's VO₂ max and then they
put them into specific groups, five groups based on their VO₂ max score. One group
was low, the other below average, the next was above average, high, and elite, again
based on those VO₂ max scores.
Now, if a person were to go from that low group up to the below average group, so just
one group above, there was a risk reduction of mortality of around 50% over a decade.
If a person moved from the low group to two groups above to that above average group,
there was a reduction in mortality of 60 to 70% over the decade. That's amazing to think
about just based upon fitness scores or that VO₂ max.
So, hopefully that gives you another potential reason to consider doing some of these high-intensity
intervals and maintain the VO₂ max because as we age, especially in the later decades,
our fitness qualities really can decline precipitously especially if we don't maintain some level
of fitness.
As always, thanks for watching our anatomy videos everyone. If you're interested in learning
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