Coach Bonheim, HIIT Pioneer

It is interesting to see how sports training has developed over the years. Athletes and coaches are always looking for ways to gain a competitive edge over the other guys in the field. That field includes both individual and team sports. The changes brought about ultimately spill over to the private sector and the result is that athletes of every level are beneficiaries. Who has not heard the motto, “Train Smarter, not Harder.”

Which brings me to Coach Bonheim. I was on Liberty’s inaugural wrestling team. Let me state this up front. I was easily the worst guy on the mat. Just ask anyone who was there, they’ll tell you. But I digress. That first season our practices followed the pattern that I had come to know from my extensive one year of wrestling experience in high school. Basically, work, work, work. We would do conditioning exercises, work on moves, and wrestle. Every day. The second season our modus operandi changed dramatically. We still worked like crazy. But at the start of that season Coach said, “All right, we are going to do something different this year.”

The ‘something different’ was along these lines. Every other practice we would only wrestle. He might have us begin with a 1 minute session, then two, then three, then three again, two and one. Sometimes he would double them up. In between each session we would walk in a circle and check our heart rate. Actually he had one of our number checking his heart rate. When it dropped below 120 beats per minute, we got set up to go the next round. By the end of these practices we would spend some 40-45 minutes wrestling.

The in between days would be spent, after initial warm up exercises, practicing moves. Just moves. We might begin with takedowns, then mat work. Over and over again.

What did this do for us? It allowed time to recover from the intense physical demands of the hard practices, and inculcate a new skill set during the easy ones. This style fits with what is known about the bodies’ response to exercise. Generally, it takes up to 48 hours to recover from a maximum effort. That off time would be spent doing lighter work.  I thought it to be a great strategy, and I wound up being in the best shape of my life. My resting heart rate back then was 50. (It’s a respectable 55 today.) Granted, I was still the worst wrestler on the team, I was just better at being the worst. That was the year I started travelling with a singing group and had to quit the team.

It turns out that Coach Bonheim was a graduate of UCLA, and had studied under a guy named Laurence Morehouse. He mentioned Dr. Morehouse a couple of times during practice and the classes I took from him. An internet search led me to a 1975 People Magazine article about Dr. Morehouse where he was promoting his book, Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a week.

Wait, what? 30 minutes? A week? This was during the era when aerobics studios were springing up all over the place. Kenneth Cooper’s best-selling book “Aerobics” was first published in 1968. In that era the accepted wisdom was that adequate fitness requires a minimum of three thirty minute cardio sessions a week. And here was Dr. Morehouse saying you could stay fit in one third of that time. A radical idea.

Today the prevailing fitness wisdom is along the lines of shorter, more intense sessions. Forget about how long I need to work out. How short can I go and still achieve fitness goals? Modern day research suggests that a single 4 minute high intensity exercise session can produce the same changes in the body as 40 minutes of steady state exercise. This was demonstrated by a number of researchers, like Dr. Izumi Tabata, the Japanese speed skating coach who has those timers named after him.  

What are the benefits of this type of training? Among other things, better oxygen uptake by the lungs, expressed as VO2 max, better insulin metabolism, added strength, and an increase in mitochondria in muscle cells. How efficient!

Back to Coach Bonheim and the wrestling team. He was having us do high intensity workouts, and believe me, wrestling is a high intensity activity, decades before this research was known. How did this new type of training affect the team? The first season, we placed fifth at the National Christian College Athletic Association tournament at Messiah College in PA. The next year they were third, and the following two years placed first. Bonheim was named Coach of the Year.

It is obvious to me that Coach was on the cutting edge with his training methods, he was a HIIT innovator and years ahead of his time.

A New Standard for Fitness?

How do we measure fitness?  Is it how fast we can run, how high we can jump?  Or maybe it’s how much we can pick up.  Many different systems of exercise have been developed over the years, some designed for the athlete to better their performance, others for individuals who are interested because being in shape helps them feel and think better.

What if we could distill the essence of fitness into a single word? That word would be ‘mitochondria’.

Why mitochondria?  Because these are little organelles that take food: carbohydrates, amino acids (protein) and fatty acids and oxidize them to create ATP, the fuel your cells use for energy.  The more of these little guys you have in your cells, the better. Every cell in your body has mitochondria, except red blood cells.  If you surmised that muscle cells are packed with them, you would be right.  And why wouldn’t they be?  Your muscles need to generate tremendous energy when called upon.  

About 40 years ago, professor John Holloszy at the University of Washington found that endurance exercise induced large changes in muscular mitochondria.  Over the intervening years, from his discovery to today, we have seen a boom in the number of people entering into some exercise regimen.   

What about the latest research?  An article posted on the Science Daily web site a few months ago presents us with the results of a study published in Cell Metabolism. The researchers took groups of volunteers, men and women in younger and older age groups and had them perform one of three different exercise programs.  One group did high intensity interval biking.  The second, strength training with weights.  The third performed a combination of the two.

The results?  While strength training caused the biggest increases in muscle mass, the high intensity exercise group experienced the largest rise in muscle mitochondria. (49% increase in the younger group, 69% increase in the older.) If that wasn’t enough the exercisers also showed improvement in insulin sensitivity. Which indicates a lower likelihood of developing diabetes.

We all know that any form of exercise is beneficial to the individual. My own adage is simple:  movement equals exercise equals fitness.  The takeaway is this: the more you move, the better shape you will be in. However, if you really want to maximize your fitness levels, ramp up the intensity and the results will follow.

Sreekumaran Nair, the lead author of the Cell Metabolism study suggests a best of both worlds approach: "If people have to pick one exercise, I would recommend high-intensity interval training, but I think it would be more beneficial if they could do 3-4 days of interval training and then a couple days of strength training,"

Here’s the link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170307155214.htm

Another excellent article can be found here:
https://www.mangomannutrition.com/mitochondrial-biogenesis-part1/
UPDATE:  I would like to see any research about aerobic exercise, running or biking, and the resulting change on cellular mitochondria.  That way we could get a better picture of what types of workouts will engender the most change.  This study only compares HIIT and weights.  It would be pretty good to put the third kind of workout next to the other two.  

Interval Training: The Now Workout?

It was the late 70's and I was a sophomore at Liberty University.  On the first day of wrestling practice Coach Bonheim called us together and announced: "All right, this year we are going to do something a little different."  He went on to explain how practices would be organized.  Every other day we would be wrestling.  The in-between days were to be spent practicing moves.  This was my introduction to interval training.

Wrestling days began with body-weight exercises.  Coach was a bit leery of free-weights back then.  Afterward the real work started.  A typical session would go like this:  Wrestling for a 1 minute period, then 2 minutes, then 3.  Next:  3 minutes, 2 minutes and 1 minute.  Between we would circle the mat and check our pulse.  Once our heart rate fell below 120 we would start again.  Thus it would continue.  Each practice would include about 45 minutes of full-on wrestling.

Off days would serve two purposes:  Recovery from the previous day; and refinement of skills.  This was radically different from what I had known before and I was curious about the effects.  They turned out to be good.  The team had a winning season and we placed 3rd in the NCCAA (National Christian College Athletic Association) tournament.  The previous year we had placed 5th.  The effect on me?  Unfortunately I had to leave the team for more pressing matters early in the season.  But the short time I had put me in arguably the best shape of my life.  I had a resting heart rate of 50.  I was strong with great endurance and flexibility.

That was then.  Today interval training and its numerous variations are among the most popular forms of exercise.  They promise all the usual benefits of training; weight loss, increased energy, muscle mass, etc, in a much shorter time frame.  I am speaking of a couple of studies which seem to show that short, intense bursts of energy can have the same effectiveness as longer, less intense sessions.

I decided to test this idea on a willing subject - me.  What kinds of changes would a high-intensity workout engender?  Not being a gym rat anymore, I own exactly three pieces of equipment.  Two 40 lb dumbbells and a NordicTrack bicycle.

On alternate days I do weights.  Back, chest (in the form of pushups), abs, shoulders and arms.  Three sets each with no more than 3 minutes rest in between.  I warm up with a quick sprint on the bike, and usually hit it again halfway through to keep my heart rate (way) up.  The in between days consist of bicycle sprints:  4 of them with 3 minutes rest in between.  This may sound like a short session.  It is.  I spend no more than 1 minute at a time riding, but my pace is furious.  Some days I go at my absolute max speed.  These last for about 30 seconds.  Other days I go at the highest rate I can perform for 1 minute.

The new workout had an immediate effect, mostly in a negative sense.  The pain in my legs by the end of each sprint was tremendous. I would be sucking air like crazy and my heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest.  This is certainly not for the squeamish! It took a few weeks for my body to adapt to this new workout.  Now I'm developing some variations to make the sprints even more intense.  My heart and breathing are still through the roof when I'm riding, but I recover quickly and by the next start time I'm more than ready to go again.

The effects?  My muscles are tight and feel great.  I haven't lost any appreciable muscle mass even though I have to do more reps than before.  Sure, the intensity leaves my legs tight, but I remedy that with stretching on off days.  On the up side, I am rarely tired or out of breath.  And what about my resting heart rate?  It's not 50 anymore.  Actually, it's a bit lower.

This type of workout carries a high discomfort factor, that's true.  But the benefits are well worth the effort.