A Smarter Interval Workout (70% More VO₂max Time)

Añadido: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Which type of VO2 max session provides the biggest payoff? Is it the longer reps, the classic 5 by 3 minutes or the Norwegian 4 by 4, or is it the shorter reps, the 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off or the minute on, minute off reps? I think we can make an easy argument for both of them. And if you've been training long enough, I'm sure that you've used both longer and shorter intervals in your training regimen. But a study from 2020 suggests that both of those might be leaving fitness on the table and that there's a third way to structure your intervals. This strategy was found to give athletes 70% more time in the exact zone that trains your VO2 max. Same effort, but a better return.

[00:00:32]That sounds pretty promising. So, in this video, we're going to talk about that third option. We're going to talk about exactly what that kind of workout looks like. We're going to talk about why it works and then ultimately how you can apply it in your own training. I'm coach Dylan Bellas. I've worked alongside over a thousand athletes over the last decade helping them plan and attack their training and racing goals.

[00:00:48]And if you're someone who is interested in training and racing or just running education or simply just looking for a different perspective in the sport, please do consider subscribing to the channel. All right. Now, let's get on to the video. Before we get into the workout, you need to understand one thing. VO2 max isn't just about running hard. This may be another topic, but you can actually improve your VO2 max in a lot of different ways including easy running, tempos, threshold pace, even repetition pace work that's faster than VO2 max. All these types of sessions do contribute to improving your VO2 max and you could probably make an argument that if you put more time on the aerobic work, you'd probably improve your VO2 max more than just training at it. But this is another topic for a different time and today we're going to try to stay on topic for the rest of this video. One thing you improving your VO2 max is that it's dependent on how long you spend at your VO2 max speed and intensity. There's a scenario where you can be running really fast and yet you're not spending much time at VO2.

[00:01:43]Likewise, you can be running really hard and yet not a lot of time at VO2. The goal of interval training or VO2 max training, it's not just about speed or intensity. It's about accumulating the amount of time at a very high aerobic effort. And again, different styles give you different amount of time spent at that VO2 max. Now, we can start with long intervals. We'll take what this study did and they did 3 minutes at intensity with 2 minutes recovery in between. This is a very standard type of workout. I'm sure you or someone else who have done some other type of workout that looked like 4 to 8 by 3 minutes with slightly less or potentially even equal speed. Jack Daniels tends to recommend a 1 to 1 recovery ratio for interval based sessions and then he actually recommends that the reps be be be between 3 and 4 minutes at a time.

[00:02:30]The way you're spending as much time at VO2 max cuz it takes some time to ramp up to it and now you're spending time in zone. Long intervals do work really well because like I said, you're getting your body up to that point and you're spending quite a bit of time at VO2 max.

[00:02:45]So, it allows you to get there and ultimately stay there. But the downside of these types of intervals is that they are really hard. They're tough. They're guttural and you really can't do that many of them. So, some people when they do these, they can only muster 10 minutes before things start to break down. Also, a lot of runners have an issue with pacing themselves. They go out too hard, they sputter out, they have to cancel the workout. And the issue here is that if you overrun these sessions and then eventually heart rate declines, you can't push your intensity, the speed declines, well now you are no longer working at your VO2 max. Now, you're working under it and you're just working really hard, and unbelievably hard, and yet you're not getting that stimulus that you desired. And these type of efforts can lead to things like increasing your risk for injury or leaving you feeling pretty burnt out and flat. I find that with a lot of beginning runners or even a lot of younger runners who are coming up in the sport, they want to hit these workouts so hard and they're able to push themselves to the max, but there's a physical battery and there's also a mental battery. So, when we do these sessions too often, they really drain both of those systems and that can really lead us to having a training plateau for one, but also just mentally burning out and not being able to reach that desired effort, intensity and speed that maybe you were once able to do when you were fresher and more peppier earlier in a block. So, we got to be really careful with the longer intervals. There's a lot of positivity that we can gain from these if we run them correctly. We learn how to pace ourselves, we distribute our energy across the board, but there's a lot of risk involved too and a lot of people don't get that right. On the flip side, again mentioning the study, they took 30 second intervals with 20 seconds of recovery in between. If you're a runner, this is just like a couple breaths, it feels like. In the study, they used cyclists, but I will, I promise, translate this more over to running and maybe something that's a bit more practical for you. But we have things like shorter intervals. You can take the 30 20 that they used, it's the same ratio as the 3 to 2 minutes, or you can do, you know, maybe a minute on, 30 seconds off or minute to minute in other scenarios where you are running hard at roughly VO2 max or VVO2 max velocity at VO2 max. And you have you do more. You have to do more because otherwise you're not going to spend a lot of time at VO2 max. Remember with the longer intervals, we are able to hit, you know, 2 minutes roughly at VO2 max in a 3 minute rep because they are so long. But remember, we are limited by the amount that we can do because 3 minutes is a long time when you're running between 6 and 10 minute race speed. But with the shorter reps, you can get a lot more work in. You can easily do 10 minutes work, 15 minutes work, 20 plus minutes of work as long as the interval is appropriate. So, you can take the 30 20. Obviously, you have to do a lot more 30 second reps, so maybe 20 of plus of them in some instances.

[00:05:37]You won't hit VO2 max on the first one, but because the rest is so short, you'll then eventually hit VO2 max. The intensity won't completely lower down between each one, so you'll end up getting quite a bit of time at VO2 max if you do enough work. Personally, I love to do more shorter reps in my training just because I'm a marathoner and I really don't need too much at VO2 and there's no really reason for me to go out and hammer these 3 4 minute reps um and potentially set myself back for my training. But the shorter reps really allow you to focus more on the speed, focus more on the mechanics. You can do a little bit longer of a workout here and they really do save some of that battery and you can pace them out a lot easier. In a way, it's it's great for some people who want to spend more time at VO2 max without having to completely go to the well and potentially sacrificing the recovery and their body to the workout. The positive The positive here is that sometimes it makes the workout easier and more approachable, but the negative of course is that you might not hit that same level of VO2 or sustained VO2 before the rep itself ends, especially if you don't do enough reps. So, you don't get as much time at VO2 because reps might be too short. So, it's a little harder to manage. On one end on the longer reps, it's overdoing it. And then on the shorter reps, sometimes it can be about underdoing it, especially if our stimulus is to improve time spent at VO2 max. Then here's where our Then here's where our study comes into play and this begs the question, can we combine both of them? Instead of just going long interval and doing short interval and being in this weird mismatch of, you know, am I doing this right? Can we potentially take some of the positives from one and some of the positives from the other and combine it to get a better effect? Let's talk about it. In that study I mentioned earlier, this is exactly what they tested. They compared three different workouts. They had a long interval session, which was 3 minutes on, 2 minutes off. They had a short interval session, which was 30 seconds on, 20 seconds off. And then they had a new format titled high intensity decreasing interval training.

[00:07:36]And what they did during the session or what they made sure of is that all three of these sessions existed within the same relative effort. They all had the same work to rest ratio and the only thing that was changed was how the workout itself was structured. And here's what the high intensity decreasing interval training looked like. At the beginning, you start with longer reps. Say you start with that 3 minutes on, 2 minutes off. This allows you to bring your body up to speed and spend time at VO2 max. And instead of potentially draining that battery too soon and not hitting enough time at VO2 max, the next rep is a little shorter.

[00:08:07]So, you go 2 minutes on and then 40 easy. And then the next rep shorter than that, 1 minute hard, 40 seconds easy.

[00:08:13]And then again, 45 seconds on, 30 seconds easy. And then you finish with 30 seconds on, 20 seconds off and you repeat that. So, instead of So, instead of just choosing one format, you move from a longer rep to a shorter rep throughout. Now, here's where it gets interesting. The key thing that they measured in this study was how much time these athletes spent above 90% of their VO2 max because this is a zone that was determined to actually drive improvement. And interestingly, here's what they found. During the longer intervals, these athletes spent 179 seconds at or above that 90% of their VO2 max. During the shorter intervals, they spent 182 seconds. So, pretty similar between longer and shorter intervals in terms of the equivalency.

[00:08:55]And then for the high intensity decreasing interval training side of it, the athletes achieved 312 seconds at or above that 90% value. And here's the most important part of this. Throughout their testing, they found that there was no difference in how hard the workout felt, how long they lasted or how fatigued they were at the end. So, the athletes didn't feel as though they were working harder and they didn't go any longer. They just got way more out of the same effort. So, why does this work?

[00:09:23]It all comes down to simple sequencing.

[00:09:25]At the start of the workout, you allow your body to ramp up. You don't instantly hit your highest level at this point, but you're building yourself into it. And the longer intervals help solve that. They help get your body up to speed, help you spend some time at VO2 max. So, maybe it took you about a minute, maybe a minute and a half to get up to that zone, but you're able to sustain that for a couple minutes at the end there before taking a recovery period. So, when you open up with these longer reps, you kind of bring your body up to speed, get more time in zone. And now, once you're already there, it becomes easier to stay there and that's where those shorter reps come into play.

[00:09:56]So, instead of dropping down to recover every single time, you recover just a little bit and then you go again and you repeat that over and over again. So, what this workout does is pretty simple.

[00:10:05]You start with longer reps to get your body up to speed and then you maintain shorter reps to keep you there. If you want to try this, you can use the same structure from the study where you do 3 minutes on, 2 minutes off, 2 minutes on, a minute 40 off, 1 minute on, 40 seconds off, 45 seconds on, 30 seconds off, 30 seconds on, 20 seconds off. And what you can do is once you get to that 30 20, you can sustain that for maybe another four, six, or even eight reps there at the end or if you were or if I was you or if you were me, what I would do is I would recycle back through this maybe two or three more times. So, I would take a longer recovery after that final 30 20. Maybe if I was on the track, I would do a jog or I would just take three or four minutes and then I would repeat back at the top. And so, I would get plenty of recovery in between, but every single time I'm getting a pretty good chunk of time spent at VO2 max while also just making sure that I'm restoring the battery just enough to where I can continue to get more and more volume. For beginning runners or people who are just kind of don't need to do too much VO2 max work or this is plenty enough for you, I'd highly recommend that you could stick with the structure just like this and then once you get to the 30 20s, you just extend that out. But there's other ways in which you can do these sessions that I want to talk about. Now, there's a lot of ways in which we can be creative with this type of training and we can build these sessions out in a lot of different ways. For example, another thing you can do is you can start with a 2 to 4 minute higher intensity rep and instead of building it down like they did here in the study, you can do two or three minutes and then follow that up with six by minute hard, 45 seconds easy and then you can repeat multiple sets of that. If you're doing it on the track, sometimes this could look like 800 to 1K at roughly 3K to 5K pace or you know, close to your VO2 max or so. Take a shorter recovery, minute and a half, two minutes and then you follow that up with six by 400 meters with really short recovery that way you are getting the stimulus, getting your body up to speed and then again you're maintaining that through some shorter intervals. And then you can take another lap jog after that and you can repeat that set. You can even do this with shorter reps if you like. It doesn't have to be a minute. You can be 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds, maybe even 90 seconds up to some some points. There's a lot of different ways in which you can do this. You can even do this on the opposite end. You can start with the shorter reps. So, you can do sets of 30 seconds. So, let's just say 10 by 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off and then you can finish that with a 3 minute hard rep right at VO2 max. You can build that up over time. So, maybe you start with 10 by 30 seconds, you work yourself up to 40, maybe even 60 and then you would also extend out that VO2 max longer session as well. So, start 3 minutes, 4 minutes, maybe by the end you get yourself all the way up to a really hard 5 minute rep by the end.

[00:12:43]Now, how should these efforts feel? The idea that I like to portray here is that the effort, the workout, it's going to feel hard. We're talking about VO2 max, like it's going to take a lot of work and it's probably going to get increasingly harder as you go as you're spending more time at VO2 max because there's a finite amount of energy that you can give before the battery completely drains. So, you're kind of flirting with that edge, but still the effort should feel in your control. It's going to be hard, you're going to be breathing, but you have to remind yourself to stay relaxed, to stay loose, to practice running smooth and not really fighting too much. When you start fighting, when you start going all out, that's where you start to see some of the negative effects and you might not be getting what you want. A lot of times people think that the harder we push, the better it is, but a lot of times even if you go look at a professional race and you see people race over the mile, over 3K, 5K, what do you see? You see a lot of people running as smoothly as possible. They're not fighting it.

[00:13:41]They're not gristling it out. Maybe not until at least the last two or 400 meters of the race when they're on their finishing kick, but you get the point.

[00:13:47]So, it should feel hard, but you should still remain in control. And remind yourself, this is roughly what you can maintain for anywhere from like six to 10 minutes for a true VO2 max session.

[00:13:59]If you use Daniel's charts, they use interval pace and they kind of extend that out a little bit. It's a little bit slower, so it's closer to that 90% of VO2 max and not quite at the top, but six to eight minutes for a true or six to 10 minutes for a true VO2 max session effort or speed, maybe even extend it out if you need more time and space to work into it because again, these are fast paces and we are not just able to nail these on the first try. You got to build your way into it. When should we use these types of sessions? So, these are quality sessions, they're really hard. You need to make sure that you're doing this when you're relatively fresh.

[00:14:34]Probably shouldn't do this session rolling off a big long run or later in the week when you're really tired. If you're really going to get the most out of yourself, you just need to make sure that you have some time and space to be able to give a proper effort to these sessions because they are harder. You want to make sure that there's at least a day separated from something longer or more intense leading up to it. Really, I would only recommend that you do a session like this one time a week. And if you're training for a marathon, you probably don't need to do much of these sessions, but it's good to just make sure that they're in the rotation if you built them up from maybe a 5K specific block or your base phase where you are emphasizing faster training. You know, every part or every facet of our fitness applies, it matters and during the beginning of a build, we might be more VO2 max focused before transitioning into the marathon work later on. But if you're in the marathon block, you don't really need to do this too often. But if you are in a more interval intensive period of training, doing a session like this once a week of varying intensities where you don't need to go to the max every single time, but just keeping it in the rotation, sometimes progressing it, sometimes maintaining it, that's exactly what you should be aiming for.

[00:15:41]Just making sure that you're also recovering properly afterwards. Last thing I want you to remember and just make sure that you don't forget here is that this is just one type of training.

[00:15:48]It's not a panacea, it's not going to take you to a whole 'nother level. It's just a way in which you can get a little smarter with your training and you maybe maximize the time that you're putting in when you're targeting these VO2 max sessions. And if you're someone who is training, even if it's for a 5K or a marathon, you got to take into account that it's not just this type of work that makes you a good runner. So, don't forget about that spectrum of training, those facets of fitness that matter just as much. It's important to have a mix of everything. Our bigger picture here is that it's just a different way to look at intervals. You don't have to necessarily choose between long and short intervals. You can do those.

[00:16:26]Sometimes it's good to do longer intervals, sometimes it's good to do shorter intervals, but maybe it's good for you to apply both of these and see if maybe you can get a little bit more work out of yourself and maybe even get a little better because of it. Before we wrap up here, just kind of mention that you know, there are limitations to most studies that we see. Of course, with this study in particular, it was relatively small. It was just a singular session, so we weren't tracked over multiple sessions over weeks or months or years and it was done on cyclists.

[00:16:53]So, you can take all that with a grain of salt. I still feel like I learned something from it or at least I gained some insightful information in which I'm going to apply to my training and to the athletes that I coach in the future because I think it's worth a shot. I don't think that we lose anything by reading these studies and trying to see if we can apply them to training. I think it's good to mix it up and like I said previously, a lot of us are probably doing some variation or have done some variation of this type of training in the past. I think it's worthwhile to test, but just just remind yourself or just as a reminder to you is that you know, we can have to take one study as a grain of salt while also still recognizing that this could be something helpful and impactful and a different way to get our bodies accustomed to taking on more intensity and translating that into higher performance. If there's one thing to take away from all this, it's that we should start with a longer rep to bring our body up to speed and to get some time at VO2 max and while we're already there, we should then introduce shorter reps to maintain that time and that intensity so that we don't completely drain the battery and we don't limit our progress by going out too hard or by potentially not having our reps be long enough to spend all that time at VO2 max that we're looking for. And over time, we want to progress both sides of the equation. And the result of all this is that we get the same amount of work that we were going to do before, but instead we get a better stimulus.

[00:18:19]So, give this a shot and try it out on your next block of training if this is a phase where you're at at this moment and let me know what you think in the comments. Have you tried any type of workouts like this before whether on purpose or it was pre-programmed for you? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

[00:18:33]Thanks again for listening. Talk to you guys next week.