Intervals must be a part of nature...
Greetings, fellow Nation'ers!
I'm starting to think that interval training workouts must be a part of nature itself. I got this observation recently while watching my dog, Spike, get all active when I get home at night.
Here's Spike's typical day:
6am: up & at 'em with a quick trip outside to do his business, then a quick feeding, and a little freedom around the house before I go to work. Then he'll settle down in his kennel.
Noon: I come home from lunch, take Spike for a quick walk, and back to the kennel once I leave for work.
5pm: One more trip outside for a post-work walk, then he'll immediately want to start playing fetch. He'll do this at various moments throughout the night. He'll go & get the ball, play with it a bit in an "active rest" sort of way, then he'll let me toss it again, and we'll do this over & over. Its basically a sprint, rest, repeat natural interval he's doing here.
His lifestyle is about like the average person's: sedentary through most of the day, with a little activity at night. Now, in today's world, it is usually prescribed to people with sedentary lives to do steady-state activities, such as treadmill walking or a cross-trainer, in a certain heart rate zone, for so many minutes, for so many times per week. This solution isn't a great one for many people who have tried it, time & time again, with minimal results.
Now, my dog is pretty darn lean, getting a good dish of doggy food 2x a day, with rawhide sticks as a snack at night. I think his leanness is due to his interval-like nature of play in the evenings. He'll get in these 5-10 minute, mini-workouts of sprint/rest intervals. Sometimes he'll do what I call his 'Figure 8" run, and do a loop around the dining room table, through the living room, into my bedroom, doing a little loopty-loop up on the bed & back down again, doing this round about 3-5 times. Then he'll rest, and either do it again for a bit, or play some more fetch.
I wonder for such a sedentary dog for a majority of a day, how does he stay so lean? My only thoughts are due to his anaerobic nature of activity he does at night.
If you ever observe wild animals, they'll often sprint, walk, rest, repeat as needed, in order to find food or perhaps prey upon their next meal.
I just think that interval training itself is just a part of our natural being. Before we even knew about heart rate monitors and heart rates, we were competing as athletes & pushing ourselves in such a way of 'Sprint, rest, repeat as needed" for those activities.
So, I just wanted to bring this up to get some people thinking about how interval training with sprint efforts can help make a difference: maybe we were just born to workout this way after all?
Run Fast, Run Strong...
Run So As To Win!
Coach Rick Karboviak
1MileNation.com
"The Big 1" is on 4.18.09: Sign up your team TODAY!
http://asapworkouts.com/1mnvr.html
I'm starting to think that interval training workouts must be a part of nature itself. I got this observation recently while watching my dog, Spike, get all active when I get home at night.
Here's Spike's typical day:
6am: up & at 'em with a quick trip outside to do his business, then a quick feeding, and a little freedom around the house before I go to work. Then he'll settle down in his kennel.
Noon: I come home from lunch, take Spike for a quick walk, and back to the kennel once I leave for work.
5pm: One more trip outside for a post-work walk, then he'll immediately want to start playing fetch. He'll do this at various moments throughout the night. He'll go & get the ball, play with it a bit in an "active rest" sort of way, then he'll let me toss it again, and we'll do this over & over. Its basically a sprint, rest, repeat natural interval he's doing here.
His lifestyle is about like the average person's: sedentary through most of the day, with a little activity at night. Now, in today's world, it is usually prescribed to people with sedentary lives to do steady-state activities, such as treadmill walking or a cross-trainer, in a certain heart rate zone, for so many minutes, for so many times per week. This solution isn't a great one for many people who have tried it, time & time again, with minimal results.
Now, my dog is pretty darn lean, getting a good dish of doggy food 2x a day, with rawhide sticks as a snack at night. I think his leanness is due to his interval-like nature of play in the evenings. He'll get in these 5-10 minute, mini-workouts of sprint/rest intervals. Sometimes he'll do what I call his 'Figure 8" run, and do a loop around the dining room table, through the living room, into my bedroom, doing a little loopty-loop up on the bed & back down again, doing this round about 3-5 times. Then he'll rest, and either do it again for a bit, or play some more fetch.
I wonder for such a sedentary dog for a majority of a day, how does he stay so lean? My only thoughts are due to his anaerobic nature of activity he does at night.
If you ever observe wild animals, they'll often sprint, walk, rest, repeat as needed, in order to find food or perhaps prey upon their next meal.
I just think that interval training itself is just a part of our natural being. Before we even knew about heart rate monitors and heart rates, we were competing as athletes & pushing ourselves in such a way of 'Sprint, rest, repeat as needed" for those activities.
So, I just wanted to bring this up to get some people thinking about how interval training with sprint efforts can help make a difference: maybe we were just born to workout this way after all?
Run Fast, Run Strong...
Run So As To Win!
Coach Rick Karboviak
1MileNation.com
"The Big 1" is on 4.18.09: Sign up your team TODAY!
http://asapworkouts.com/1mnvr.html
Rick,
I LOVE it! What a handsome guy, and what a great post! We can learn a lot from our dogs! I know my Biskit LOVES his sprints!
Have a good weekend!
Sarah
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