#or this could be established and it’s their routine signaling for when Mike wants a kiss

[kiirotoao]

Mike, stars in his eyes, holding Will’s cheek as he whispers, “look at me.”

Breathe if you agree!!!

[lavendermiilk]

HIT, HIIT…or HIIRT? – Theory To Practice

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe 

The ARXFit Alpha providing this particular session’s HIIRT train caboose.  Huh…

Curious as to what the differences are between HIT, HIIT and HIIRT?  Well, what follows are what I consider to be the high points.  Tomes could be written on the similarities between these methodologies, but I think the following gives a pretty good overview.

First, a couple of definitions:

HIT – High Intensity Training: The area covered by the overarching umbrella of classic High Intensity Training (HIT) is wide indeed, including such broad-stroke methodologies as classic, single-set-to-failure HIT, and various super-slow routines.  Included too, are all manner of TUL (time under load), repetition tempo, and rest period manipulations. Methodologies here are largely those popularized by Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and bodybuilding’s Mike Mentzer.

Note: for info on “training to failure” see this post.

HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training: Most studies on classic High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) focus on only sprint (running) and/or cycle sprint sessions, because that’s what’s available and most easily studied in a lab setting.  A good article summarizing HIIT, and its positive effects, here.

HIIRT – High Intensity Interval Resistance Training: At it’s most basic, HIIRT is a powerful burst of output (typically 20 – 80 seconds), followed by a scaled rest period.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Think HIIT Tabata sprints — but with heavy resistance exercises.  Brief, brutal and basic are key words here.  I’ve fused elements of CrossFit, and the work of folks such as Scott Abel, Istavan Javorek,  and Joel Jamieson (in addition to whole slew of others) — along with my own, 35+ years-in-the-trenches experience — to create my own methodology.  Hints of HIT?  You know it.  Shades of HIIT?  Yeah, that too.  I come from a background of slinging iron as a way of bettering performance on the track and on the gridiron.  I came of age in an atmosphere that knew no S&C dogma — if it worked, it worked, and that’s all that ultimately mattered.  And that’s the credo I operate by today.

HIT, HIIT, or HIIRT — what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, the distinction lay in the overall intent of each individual “set” (or output burst).  HIT attempts to attain total muscular failure (within an allotted time window) in the targeted musculature, whereas HIIT and HIIRT attempt to attain as many repetitions (or highest cumulative work or power output) as possible within a set, or established time period.  With HIT, each exercise is generally performed once through, to failure.  In HIIT or HIIRT, an exercise may be performed 2, 3 or even many more times within a workout.  I say “generally” here because there is much overlapping and gray area within these methodologies.  HIIT is definitely a conditioning-biased protocol — i.e., Metabolic Conditioning, or MetCon, for short — whereas we can consider HIIRT a hybrid of both HIT and HIIT.  And a HIIRT session may be, depending upon how it is set up, strength, hypertrophy, or MetCon (strength endurance) biased. Confused? Don’t be; this will all make sense soon enough.

Can you give an example?

Sure.   Here’s an example of what I consider to be a classic HIIRT workout: six distinct exercises, 3 upper body dominant exercises alternated with 3 lower body dominant, all set in a circuit format.  Each exercise is performed all-out, full-bore (as many reps or the most force and/or power developed as possible) for 1 full minute.  Then, rest for 1 full minute before beginning the next exercise in succession.  Wash, rinse and repeat.  Each exercise will be performed twice during the 2-round duration of the workout.  If you’re doing the math, we’ve got 24 minutes worth of work and rest here.  Even allowing for some degree of spillover, we can still get this workout done in 30 minutes.  Brief, brutal, basic…and extremely effective.  Consider this scenario:

(A1) Tbar swings (A2) Powermax 360 push-pull/cross-punch (30 secs each exercise, shift on the fly) (A3) ARXFit leg press (A4) ARXFit flat press (A5) Reverse lunge iso hold with dumbbell curls (30 secs each leg, shift on the fly) (A6) Blast strap rows

The actual exercises are not so important at this juncture; what is important is the overall workout setup.  I could crank the intensity up a notch here by reducing the rest period between each exercise to say 45 or even 30 seconds, by bumping-up the work period, or by increasing the exercise resistance.  By virtue of me using resistance exercises here I’ve just morphed a classic HIIT setup (which could have used sprints, hops, jumps, bodyweight exercises, etc.) into a resistance-based interval circuit, or HIIRT, with, in this example, a decidedly MetCon (metabolic conditioning) bias.

So achieving total muscular failure is not a goal of a HIIRT session?

Not necessarily.  Remember when I said that there are no hard lines of distinction between these various protocols?  Consider the following, more strength/hypertrophy-biased (as opposed to the previous example’s MetCon-biased), upper body emphasis HIIRT workout:

(A1) OmniFit pec flye x 5 hyper reps (A2) Leverage machine flat press (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (A3) Bent over row 20X0, 7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

(B1) Hip press with bands, (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (B2) Russian leg curls 30X0,  7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

Notice the very HIT-like feel of the flat press and hip press execution.

*note: the (for example) 30X0 annotation denotes the exercise repetition tempo in the eccentric, pause, concentric, pause format.  30X0 would, therefore, be performed with a 3 second negative, followed by no pause leading into a fast-as-possible concentric, with an immediate return to the subsequent negative.  Note, too, that there is a profound difference between “exploding” into the concentric portion of a movement, and “jerking” into the motion.  There is a time and place for ballistic, “jerking” movements for sure — just not with this protocol.

Two rounds of each can certainly be accomplished in 30 minutes if the rest period between exercises is held sufficiently brief (i.e., less than 1 minute). Extending the rest period will require eliminating the pre-exhaust exercise (in this case, the OmniFit flye), which is fine, considering that if a client is not yet up to the fast-paced nature of the workout to begin with, they probably aren’t in need of a pre-exhaust anyway.

So what are the advantages of HIIRT vs other forms of training?

Well, what we’ve done at Efficient Exercise is essentially turn what would be considered a huge disadvantage (a 30-minute session time constraint) into a decided advantage for the client.  Not only do Efficient Exercise clients need only invest an hour or so per week in the studio to achieve an optimum level of health, but that investment pays huge dividends when it comes to effective fat loss and muscle gain.

How does HIIRT maximize fat loss?

Well, there are many ways and associated reasons, but here are the main points to consider:

The bottom line? In order to maximize fat loss, we must elevate growth hormone secretion, minimize insulin spikes, improve muscle insulin sensitivity, and keep cortisol under control.  This is best achieved by keeping training sessions brief, brutal, basic and intermittent.

The other side of the coin is, of course, muscle gain.  To induce muscle growth we must stimulate protein synthesis in muscle tissue.  Protein synthesis is initiated by an exercise/movement that most effectively:

And the take-home message is this: Recruit and fatigue as many muscle fibers as possible, as fast as possible, and ensure adequate post-workout recovery and nutrition following the workouts.  Remember, exercise ought to be considered a high-amplitude signal that subsequently affects the body’s on-going, anabolic hormonal milieu.  Too much is too much; too little is too little.  Profound, I know — and yet it is so very true.

So how do we get these two processes to work hand-in-hand, creating an anabolic environment for muscle growth, while at the same time forcing the body to use fat stores to help meet energy demands?

Note: diet plays a HUGE role here as well.  The focus of this section, though, is exercise protocol selection.

1. Stimulate muscle growth with compound exercises, performed for 6-20 repetitions to failure (if strength/hypertrophy is sought), or for max work or power output (if MetCon biased).

The repetition range, together with the execution tempo, will determine the nature of muscle fiber recruitment. We want to recruit, tax and fully exhaust as many fibers as possible, including slow twitch, intermediate, and fast-twitch fibers. As with all strength exercises, slow twitch fibers are recruited first, then as the muscles fatigue, intermediate and finally fast twitch fibers are recruited if and only if the set is continued until fatigue sets in.

Muscle growth is best achieved when the exercises are performed with controlled eccentric movements and continuous tension. Make an effort to minimize momentum unless the nature of the exercise dictates otherwise.

2. Improve insulin sensitivity by performing a sufficient volume of work.

Multiple (2 or 3) sets performed within the 6-20 repetition range is best for depleting muscle glycogen (and stimulating protein synthesis). During HIIRT training, muscle glycogen is broken down at a rapid rate, which results in improved muscle insulin sensitivity and increased LPL (lipoprotein lipase) activity on muscle tissue, causing nutrients to be preferentially partitioned towards muscle tissue.  Insulin sensitivity increases on muscle cells when glycogen stores are low. When this occurs, nutrients are partitioned into the muscle tissue and fat stores are broken down.

3. Increases in testosterone.

4. Maximize GH production with short rest interval HIIRT circuits.

GH is most effectively released performing strength circuits where both upper and lower body muscles are fully taxed, and keeping rest intervals short.

HIIRT leads to a significant drop in blood pH (via the rapid breakdown of glycogen and subsequent release of hydrogen ions), which in turn triggers increased production in GH.

An interesting aside: contrary to popular belief, it’s not lactic acid that causes muscle burn; this is actually the result of lowered blood pH creating an acidic environment, thereby resulting in that old, familiar, muscle burn and fatigue. The brain senses the situation and increases output of GH.

We know that testosterone is important for recovery, shedding fat and building muscle — but what’s so great about growth hormone?

Plenty.  GH has been shown to stimulate fat breakdown (lipolysis), increase the utilization of fat, and decrease the use of carbohydrate as fuel.  GH has beneficial effects on muscle mass, bone density, body fat, and it can help reverse some of the age-related changes in lean body mass (sarcopenea).

GH has also been shown to act as a suppressive on myostatin.  And myostatin, you may remember, inhibits muscle growth and is a negative regulator of muscle tissue. Higher GH release means lower myostatin expression; lower myostatin can result in increased anabolic activity and an increase in androgen receptor expression.

Research shows that circuit strength training (and high intensity sprint training) are both effective methods for naturally elevating GH secretion in healthy adults.  It is my opinion that these effects can be greatly enhanced by adding a resistance exercise element — HIIRT — to the mix.

*Also*: please check out my post ARXFit, and the Perfect Rep.  Because all of this methodology is less-than-effective unless the basic building blocks are solidified.  And yes, ARXFit for sure enables a perfect repetition, but the lessons learned here can for sure be applied to conventional exercise methods.

Heal thyself, hone thyself, change the world – Keith

This content was originally published here.

from https://makingthebest.com/hit-hiit-or-hiirt-theory-to-practice/

[ijournalnews]

Coronavirus Live Updates: Officials Say C.D.C. Errors Caused Testing Delays

Contamination at C.D.C. labs resulted in delayed coronavirus tests.

Federal officials acknowledged on Saturday that sloppy laboratory practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caused contamination that rendered the nation’s first coronavirus tests ineffective.Two of the three C.D.C. laboratories in Atlanta that created the coronavirus test kits violated their own manufacturing standards, resulting in the agency sending tests that did not work properly to nearly all of the 100 state and local public health labs, according to the Food and Drug Administration.“C.D.C. did not manufacture its test consistent with its own protocol,” Stephanie Caccomo, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A., said in a statement on Saturday.Problems ranged from researchers entering and exiting the coronavirus laboratories without changing their coats, to test ingredients being assembled in the same room where researchers were working on positive coronavirus samples, the F.D.A. said. Those practices made the tests sent to public health labs unusable because they were contaminated with the coronavirus, and produced some inconclusive results.The F.D.A. confirmed its conclusions late this week after several media outlets requested public disclosure of its inquiry, which is part of a larger federal investigation into the C.D.C. lab irregularities by the Department of Health and Human Services.Forced to suspend the launch of a nationwide detection program for the coronavirus for a month, the C.D.C. lost credibility as the nation’s leading public health agency and the country lost ground in ways that continue to haunt grieving families, the sick and the worried well from one state to the next.To this day, the C.D.C.’s singular failure symbolizes how unprepared the federal government was in the early days to combat a fast-spreading outbreak of a new virus, and it also highlights the glaring inability at the onset to establish a systematic testing policy that would have revealed the still unknown rates of infection in many regions of the country. The blunders are posing new problems as some states with few cases agitate to reopen and others remain in virtual lockdown with cases and deaths still climbing.Doctors are scrambling to handle an unanticipated crisis as a surge in Covid-19 patients with kidney failure has led to shortages of machines, supplies and staff required for emergency dialysis.Evidence is mounting that in addition to respiratory complications, the coronavirus is also shutting down some patients’ kidneys, posing yet another series of life-and-death calculations for doctors, who were already dealing with a shortage of ventilators.It is not yet known whether the kidneys are a major target of the virus, or whether they’re just one of many organs that can fail as the virus overwhelms the body.Kidney specialists now estimate that 20 percent to 40 percent of patients in intensive care suffered kidney failure and needed emergency dialysis. Outside of New York, the growing demand for kidney treatments is becoming a major burden on hospitals in emerging hot spots like Boston, Chicago, New Orleans and Detroit.Not only are there few spare machines, fluids and other supplies needed for the dialysis regimen are also running short. The number of trained nurses on hand to provide the treatment has also been limited.Hospitals said they have called on the federal government to help prioritize equipment, supplies and personnel for the areas of the country that most need it, adding that manufacturers had not been fully responsive to the higher demand.As soon as the clock ticked past 5 p.m. on Friday, signaling the reopening of beaches in Jacksonville, Fla., people flocked to the shoreline in droves, evidence of Floridians’ desire for fresh, salty air after more than two weeks under a stay-at-home order.Photographs showed people walking dogs, carrying flip flops and soaking up the sun at beaches in Duval County, which first ordered people to stay off the sand in March. On Friday and Saturday, people reveled in the opportunity to dive through waves again.Some people criticized the sudden rush to the shore, saying the crowded beaches risked spreading the virus further. Friday was one of the deadliest days for the coronavirus in Florida, where more than 730 people have died and at least 25,000 have been infected. On Saturday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Florida’s public schools would remain shut for the remainder of the academic year.Mayors in the county warned that the beaches were only reopening for activities deemed “essential,” a list that included fishing, surfing and taking care of pets.“Just to be clear, this is an opportunity for people to come out to the beach and exercise a couple of times a day,” Mayor Charlie Latham of Jacksonville Beach said at a news conference with other local mayors. “It’s not a sunbathing opportunity.”Organized group activities, such as picnics and team sports, will still be prohibited, and park restrooms will be closed. Beaches will open from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.“This can be the beginning of the pathway back to normal life,” Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville said in a video address on Thursday, when he announced the reopening. He and other officials pleaded with residents to be careful and patient, and some warned that the privilege could be revoked if proper safety guidelines were not followed.Asked about crowded Florida beaches, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator, indicated she would defer to county health officials.“I’d have to link that with a specific county and look at their case rates,” she said at a White House news briefing. “If the county health directors believe that that’s appropriate for their county, then I’m not going to second-judge an individual’s approach to this.”Mr. Trump chimed in, saying: “Many of the counties, as you know, are really free of this horrible enemy. So we’re opening up. You’ll be seeing a lot of this country start to open up fairly quickly.”On Saturday, Mr. DeSantis, under pressure from the AARP, also ordered state health officials to release the names of nursing homes and other long-term care centers where staff members and residents have tested positive for the virus.The list revealed that more than 300 homes for older people in Florida have confirmed cases, as the pandemic has continued to ravage nursing homes nationwide.At a news conference, Mr. DeSantis said it was “necessary for public health” to disclose the names of the homes. “I don’t want to be in a situation where the families don’t know,” he said.With the death toll from the pandemic already surpassing 34,000 Americans and unemployment soaring to levels not seen since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly believe that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America��s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.President Trump’s own campaign aides have endorsed the strategy, releasing an attack ad last week depicting former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, as soft on China. The ad relied heavily on images of people of Asian descent, including former Gov. Gary Locke of Washington, who is Chinese-American, and it was widely viewed as fanning the flames of xenophobia.But there is a potential impediment to the G.O.P. plan — the leader of the party himself.Eager to continue trade talks, uneasy about further rattling the markets and hungry to protect his relationship with President Xi Jinping at a moment when the United States is relying on China’s manufacturers for lifesaving medical supplies, Mr. Trump has repeatedly muddied Republican efforts to fault China.It remains to be seen whether Mr. Trump’s conflicted messaging on China will hurt him with voters, who have repeatedly seen the president argue both sides of issues without suffering the harm that another politician would. And while Mr. Trump’s team knows that his own words will be used against him, they believe they can contrast his history favorably with that of Mr. Biden.From the cashier to the emergency room nurse to the drugstore pharmacist to the home health aide taking the bus to check on her older client, the soldier on the front lines of the current national emergency is most likely a woman.One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential, according to a New York Times analysis of census data crossed with the federal government’s essential worker guidelines. Nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else.The work they do has often been underpaid and undervalued — an unseen labor force that keeps the country running and takes care of those most in need, whether or not there is a pandemic.Women make up nearly nine out of 10 nurses and nursing assistants, most respiratory therapists, the majority of pharmacists and the overwhelming majority of pharmacy aides and technicians. More than two-thirds of the workers at grocery store checkouts and fast food counters are women.In his first trip from Washington in over a month, Vice President Mike Pence delivered the Air Force Academy’s commencement address in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Saturday.He and his aides have been pushing the Trump administration to reopen the country, and this trip was seen as an attempt to demonstrate that certain old routines can soon start up again.“We gather at a time of national crisis, as the coronavirus epidemic impacts our nation and the wider world,” Mr. Pence told the graduating class of senior cadets who will be commissioned as second lieutenants.The small, somber graduation reflected the moment of crisis the country is in: There were no spectators or family in attendance, and cadets sat eight feet apart from one another as Mr. Pence spoke. They also did not march onstage to receive their diplomas, as they did when President Trump spoke at the ceremony last year.When Mr. Pence, who did not wear a face mask, arrived on the tarmac in Colorado Springs, he was greeted by Gov. Jared Polis, whose face mask featured a pattern of the Colorado state flag. The two men did not shake hands.“We will get through this,” Mr. Pence told the cadets in his speech. “You’ll also inspire confidence that we will prevail against the invisible enemy in our time.”Mr. Pence is expected to resume a semi-regular travel schedule in the coming weeks.

Researchers say testing needs to triple for the U.S. to reopen safely, as Cuomo says testing is critical.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York acknowledged on Saturday that hospitalizations in his state had begun to decrease, but added that the state’s economy could not fully reopen without more widespread testing, which would require both supplies and an operational capacity that the health system does not currently have.“We are barely stabilizing our public health system right now,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily briefing. “The first priority is life and death and public health. We’re not at a point where we’re going to be reopening anything immediately.”As Mr. Cuomo and other governors consider easing social distancing restrictions, new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month.An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the Covid Tracking Project. To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates.That level of testing would be needed to identify the majority of people who are infected and isolate them from people who are healthy, according to the researchers. About 20 percent of those tested so far have been positive for the virus, a rate that the researchers say is too high.“If you have a very high positive rate, it means that there are probably a good number of people out there who have the disease who you haven’t tested,” said Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. “You want to drive the positive rate down, because the fundamental element of keeping our economy open is making sure you’re identifying as many infected people as possible and isolating them.”At least 100 people gathered on the statehouse grounds in Austin to call for the reopening of the state and the country, riding a wave of similar protests at statehouses and in city streets this past week.The urgency of the rally was reduced somewhat by an announcement from Gov. Greg Abbott that he was already acting on plans to reopen the state. Mr. Abbott, a Republican, said he was starting a “phased-in” approach to reopen the state economy, including lifting some restrictions in the coming days on medical procedures unrelated to the virus, retail shopping and public access to state parks.With more than 22 million unemployment claims nationwide in the past four weeks, some conservatives have begun voicing displeasure with the moribund economy.As businesses have been shuttered in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus, which has killed more than 34,000 people in the United States, a common theme has emerged uniting the various protests around a shared desire to return to work.The protests have been encouraged by President Trump, but polls show that most Americans support restrictions meant to combat the virus.Similar demonstrations were also held in other far-flung corners of the country on Saturday, with groups rallying in Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Annapolis, Md.At around noon, protesters in Annapolis, many wearing masks, some waving signs and others in their cars honking their horns, moved through the streets to loudly call on Gov. Larry Hogan to reopen businesses.In Bloomfield, Wis., many protesters waved flags and held up signs in support of Mr. Trump, openly defying orders by Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin to stay home.The debate over how soon to loosen restrictions on businesses and workers has moved from the hands of health experts to become an increasingly political fight over costs to the economy, which Mr. Trump sees as crucial to his re-election.Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a potential vice-presidential pick, has stirred Republican fears that her growing popularity will help Democrats carry the battleground state of Michigan in November, whether or not she is on the ticket. Referring to the raucous rally that snarled traffic in Lansing, Mich., on Wednesday, she said, “It felt a lot more like a political rally than a statement about the stay-home order.”At his daily briefing on Saturday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York warned that politicizing people’s frustrations would be costly.“It is as a tumultuous a time as we have ever seen,” Mr. Cuomo said. “But in the midst of this, there is no time for politics. How does this situation get worse and get worse quickly? If you politicize all that emotion. We cannot go there.”The border between the United States and Canada will remain closed for another 30 days, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday.As with a previous agreement that came into effect last month, people whose travel is deemed essential — a group that includes health care workers — will still be allowed to cross. Trucks, airplanes, trains and ships will also continue to carry freight between the two countries.The extension of the border closing came as the Pentagon announced that it would prolong a national and international travel ban, stopping military units from deploying overseas and returning until June 30. The original ban was set to expire in mid-May.The Harry S. Truman, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with more than 4,000 people aboard, was scheduled to return from the Middle East for weeks, but is stuck off the eastern coast of the United States. Marines from the Seventh Marine Regiment, who were deployed to Kuwait and set to return home at the end of the month, are similarly left waiting for flights to be rescheduled.

Some officials are allowing craft stores to reopen.

Craft stores, which some Americans have turned to for cloth coverings and materials for face masks, are getting approval to reopen in some parts of the country.Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, a Democrat, said this week that he was extending the state’s stay-at-home orders until May 26, but he eased restrictions on certain businesses, including arts and crafts stores, which can now offer curbside pickup of materials for masks and other forms of personal protective equipment. The stores are required to operate with the minimum number of workers needed to sell the materials.In Dallas, county commissioners voted on Thursday to allow craft-store chains like Michaels and Hobby Lobby to reopen. Stores that sell fabric are now deemed essential there, and can sell cloth coverings, masks and materials for home schooling. Earlier this month, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins asked residents to report craft stores and other businesses that remained opened in violation of state orders.The decisions come after weeks of heated back-and-forth between local governments and stores such as Sears, Kmart, Guitar Center and Joann Fabric and Craft Stores that have said they offer essential services for customers stuck at home during the pandemic and should be open for business. Earlier this month, the arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby was accused of defying stay-at-home orders in at least four states, prompting officials to send cease-and-desist letters and close stores.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is encouraging people to wear basic cloth masks when they cannot practice social distancing. Because of widespread shortages, Americans have flocked to D.I.Y. solutions, often making their own masks with needle, thread and strips of cotton.

Slaughterhouses struggle to keep up meat production as the virus spreads in factories.

As meat production has waned and meatpackers have fallen sick with the coronavirus at alarming rates, slaughterhouses are emerging as a weak point in the nation’s food supply chain.The number of cattle slaughtered this past week dropped nearly 22 percent from the same period a year ago, while hog slaughter was down 6 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture. The decline is partly driven by the shutdown of restaurants and hotels, but plant closings have also caused a major disruption, leaving many ranchers with nowhere to send their animals.As of Thursday, the Smithfield pork factory in Sioux Falls, S.D., had become the nation’s single largest coronavirus “hot spot.” Its employees now make up about 44 percent of the diagnoses in South Dakota.Despite warnings from executives that the country could be approaching a meat shortage, state and federal regulators have sent mixed signals to the industry about how to deal with the crisis.In the 1980s and ’90s, major meat producers in the U.S. gradually began buying out competitors and building up massive plants that could slaughter more than a million animals a year, increasingly concentrating the industry in a few states where animal feed is grown, like Iowa and South Dakota.As the virus has spread quickly in some of these plants, executives fear it may be difficult for factories to remain open and profitable while taking measures to protect workers.Democrats sent the Trump administration a compromise offer late Friday evening in an effort to break an impasse over replenishing funds for a new loan program, created as a way to help businesses weather the pandemic. The program, known as the Paycheck Protection Program because it provides forgivable loans for small businesses that use most of the funds to maintain their payroll, stopped accepting applications on Thursday as lawmakers remained at odds over how to move forward.Democrats had blocked an effort to increase the amount of funding because they insisted on additional conditions that would ensure more small businesses had access to the funds and more money for localities and state governments.The offer, according to a senior Democratic aide, would include $150 billion for states and local governments, prioritizing need and establishing new pots of money for cities, counties and towns. The offer also outlines stipulations to the aid program, more money for testing and hospitals and additional funds for the small business program, which was created as part of the $2 trillion stimulus package that President Trump signed into law last month. Republicans initially resisted those requests, but have begun to acknowledge that such a compromise may be needed. It is unclear how different the offer is from what Democrats initially proposed this month.Speaking at a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Trump said funding for the program was “fully drained.”“Lawmakers must stop blocking these funds and replenish the program without delay,” he added.Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has privately conferred with Democrats over ways to break the impasse, leaving some Republicans wary that Mr. Mnuchin may acquiesce too much to Democrats in an effort to replenish the program, which has left millions of small businesses without relief. With Congress not expected to return to Washington until May 4, any legislation would require unanimous agreement from all 100 senators — meaning that any compromise Mr. Mnuchin wrangles with Democrats will have to win the approval of Republicans in both chambers.Apprehensive about Mr. Mnuchin’s willingness to offer concessions to Democrats in previous stimulus negotiations, Republicans are warily watching the talks over replenishing a small-business loan program.

The Census Bureau is scrambling to figure out how to count Americans.

Slammed by a pandemic, the Census Bureau postponed crucial portions of the count for the third time in a month, pushing final population totals and even reapportionment of Congress far into 2021.The unprecedented delay buys time for census strategists to try to figure out how a head count built around engaging the public — through advertising, crowd-drawing events and knocking on millions of doors — can succeed in a nation locked down by the coronavirus pandemic.The obstacles are enormous and the cost of failure would be large. Most critically, the task of counting those who were already hardest to count — chiefly minorities, the poor, children and those who were born elsewhere — keeps getting harder.Strategists are betting that the virus’s grip will weaken enough by mid-August to safely deploy hundreds of thousands of temporary field workers to track down the millions who still have not sent in forms. Without the success of that exercise — known in census-speak by the acronym NRFU (“ner-foo”), for nonresponse follow-up — the census will be compromised.Experts say that effort, which is set to run through October, is likely to be the diciest aspect of the entire reboot. The census is supposed to be a snapshot of the nation at the beginning of April; the door-knocking was originally supposed to begin in May. But by autumn, the national mosaic will have reshuffled.“The farther you get from April 1, the less accurate the data is,” said Jeri Green, a veteran Census Bureau employee who now is the senior adviser on the census for the National Urban League. “In some communities people may be one stimulus check from getting off someone’s couch. Weddings are coming up. People are going to move out of their parents’ homes.”Even as it scrambles to contain the spread of Covid-19 in the United States, the Trump administration is pushing forward with its immigration enforcement agenda, deporting thousands of people to their home countries, including some who are sick with the virus.Deportations also have risen sharply for children and teenagers traveling without their parents — long considered so vulnerable that they have almost never faced expedited deportations, until now.The Trump administration closed the border to all but essential travel last month, warning that migrants could bring the coronavirus into the United States. But Guatemalan officials said this week that the United States has been exporting the virus to their country.Dozens of Guatemalans who have been deported since late March have tested positive, according to the authorities there. A team of researchers from the Centers for Disease Control traveled to Guatemala this week “to review and validate” the tests.“When you send kids back without any precautions,” said Michelle Brané, of the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group, “you create a situation in which traffickers, smugglers and people who want to take advantage of them are literally waiting for them in these border towns.”Are face masks going to become like condoms — ubiquitous, sometimes fashionable, promoted with public service announcements? They should be, one virus researcher says, if early indications are correct in suggesting that the coronavirus is often spread by people who feel healthy and show no symptoms.“Face masks are a barrier method that might also need to be worn consistently and correctly to prevent transmission of this virus,” David O’Connor, who studies viral disease at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in an email.He said it was time to “normalize face masks, and fast.”States are now following that guidance, as New Yorkers now walk behind their own personal barriers. A population known for big mouths pulled on a newly essential accessory and ventured into a landscape that changed yet again on Friday when, as of 8 p.m., a new order from the governor mandated the wearing of masks in public.As part of his latest measures to contain the coronavirus, which has killed more than 12,000 people in the state and infected more than 200,000, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo rolled out the executive order this week.Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania are requiring that masks be worn in stores; likewise in Los Angeles and some surrounding California counties. New York’s order is the most expansive, requiring face coverings anywhere in the state where two people might come within two yards of each other, though for now, there is no fine for disobeying.“Nobody likes it, but we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do,” said Amanda Neville, 43, inside her wine store in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.​In the United States, ​President Trump’s mercurial messages ​have been widely contrasted with the detailed briefings by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. Elsewhere in the world, leaders ​have also taken ​approaches that run the gamut.Here are highlights from the five leaders The Times examined.Prime Minister Boris JohnsonIn one of his first news conferences about the virus, Mr. Johnson mentioned a “clear plan” for Britain to contain it but detailed few concrete measures. He also talked about the values of “herd immunity,” suggesting that allowing many people to be exposed to the virus would help build immunity. Days later, he reversed course, putting the nation on lockdown and ordering Britons to stay at home.Chancellor Angela MerkelMs. Merkel shocked some during one of her earliest news briefings on the outbreak when she outlined a stark possibility: In a worst-case situation, she said, up to 70 percent of the German population could become infected. At a time when other leaders were hoping to lessen the blow in their messaging, she stood out. But her frankness preserved the trust of Germans.President Rodrigo DuterteIn the Philippines, the pandemic is Mr. Duterte’s latest reason to greenlight extrajudicial killings. More than 5,000 people have been killed in his war on drugs. Initially dismissive of the coronavirus, Mr. Duterte later introduced stringent measures, including a lockdown. Critics have accused him of pursuing his often-stated ambition of imposing martial law. He threatened those who considered breaking the lockdown, instructing the police and military to “shoot them dead.”

The how, when, what and why on masks.

Starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, people in New York must wear masks or other coverings when social distancing is not possible, including on mass transit, to prevent the spread of the virus. But everyone should be wearing masks when out in public, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Here’s everything you need to know.Reporting was contributed by Reed Abelson, Ian Austen, Karen Barrow, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Emily Cochrane, Michael Corkery, Caitlin Dickerson, Manny Fernandez, Sheri Fink, Trip Gabriel, Robert Gebeloff, James Gorman, Annie Karni, Nicholas Kulish, Sarah Lyall, Jonathan Martin, Zach Montague, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Kwame Opam, Keith Collins, Rick Rojas, Campbell Robertson, Giovanni Russonello, Kirk Semple, Katie Thomas, Michael D. Shear, Michael Wilson, Michael Wines, Patricia Mazzei and David Yaffe-Bellany. Source link Read the full article

[thisdaynews]

‘When paradigms die’: China veterans fear extinction in Trump’s Washington

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/when-paradigms-die-china-veterans-fear-extinction-in-trumps-washington/

‘When paradigms die’: China veterans fear extinction in Trump’s Washington

“The reality is China is not going anywhere. It’s one-fifth of humanity,” Susan Thornton said. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

President Donald Trump’s push to toughen U.S. policy toward China has won over much of the Washington establishment, touching off a seismic shift in how many Americans view Beijing.

But one group is resisting — those who have spent decades pursuing diplomacy with China and who fear their approach might go extinct.

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These former officials, diplomats and scholars are wary about the rise of a younger foreign policy generation that is almost uniformly more skeptical of China, never having experienced the impoverished, isolated country it once was. And they’re warning that the increasingly hard-line stance emanating from Washington — from both Republicans and Democrats — could unravel decades of relationship-building, raise the risk of a U.S.-China military confrontation and even lead to a new era of McCarthyism in America.

“I’m a globalist — I want the U.S. to be engaged in the world, including with other major countries like China,” said Susan Thornton, who oversaw East Asian and Pacific affairs in 2017 and 2018 at the State Department and was viewed by some Trump aides as too soft on Beijing. “The reality is China is not going anywhere. It’s one-fifth of humanity.”

Thornton went public with her concerns earlier this month, when she joined about 100 others to publish an open letter to Trump and members of Congress titled “China is not an enemy.”

“Although we are very troubled by Beijing’s recent behavior, which requires a strong response, we also believe that many U.S. actions are contributing directly to the downward spiral in relations,” the group wrote.

Douglas Paal, who held top Asia-related roles in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, said he signed the letter because “I just felt that we were getting one voice out of Washington only, which was conflict and confrontation.”

“People on other side, they tend to focus on the last 10 years but forget the last 40,” he said.

In a sign of how hotly contested such a stance has become, however, a rebuttal letter came within weeks. More than 100 people, many of them with military backgrounds, signed on to the missive, which urged Trump to “stay the course” in confronting China and declared that past U.S. engagement with China “contributed materially to the incremental erosion of U.S. national security.”

The letter was led by retired Navy Capt. James Fanell and was signed by many who came up through the military ranks. Some are part of Red Star Rising, a Fanell-led email group focused on China.

“For too long the names on the first letter have dominated the narrative on US-China relations,” Fanell wrote in an email. “U.S. administrations from both political parties have followed their advice for more than three decades over which the People’s Republic of China has not become the ‘responsible stakeholder’ they asserted it would be. It’s become a much graver threat, with our help!”

The spat, which continues in op-eds, speeches and other forums, is intense and at times personal — the more hawkish side sometimes derides the other as “panda huggers.” But for the most part, it has remained professional, people said. No one said they had been knowingly barred from Beltway jobs or cocktail parties as a result of joining the debate.

Thornton’s case, though, offers caution. She left the Foreign Service last year after her nomination to serve as assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs stalled on Capitol Hill — she’d been tagged as too nice to China.

There’s little question that more American leaders, on both the left and right, now believe the U.S. must be tougher on China. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, has urged Trump to “hang tough” on trade talks with China. Former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democratic candidate for president, drew criticism earlier this year for seeming to downplay the China challenge.

The shift toward a more hard-line U.S. stance on China began during the Obama administration and has accelerated under Trump. It has also coincided with the ascent of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi has expanded China’s military and economic presence by investing heavily in developing countries, and U.S. experts fear the moves are designed to trap those nations in perpetual servitude. The ruling Chinese Communist Party has intensified its crackdown on political dissent at home while also targeting religious minorities. It has placed more than 1 million Uighur Muslims in internment camps, according to the United Nations.

Critics also say China’s rulers view private businesses as appendages of the state, leading to concerns that Beijing could use firms — such as the tech company Huawei — as a tool to infiltrate other countries. Fears are also growing that Chinese students studying at American universities are spies in waiting for Beijing.

Trump’s top aides routinely warn about the dangers that China poses, with some even suggesting a civilizational clash is unfolding. Vice President Mike Pence gave a speech in October that some in China viewed as signaling the dawn of a new cold war. FBI Director Christopher Wray, whose agency has urged universities to more closely monitor Chinese students, has advocated a “whole of society” approach to counter Beijing.

Trump himself is most fixated on trade. He has imposed increasingly steep tariffs on China to pressure it into signing on to a new trade deal that he hopes will favor the United States. But Trump also has tried to keep a warm relationship with Xi — flummoxing China hawks this week when he praised Xi’s response to protests in Hong Kong. Still, even Trump concedes his relationship with Xi has soured.

“I used to say he was a good friend of mine,” Trump said earlier this month. “We’re probably not quite as close now. But I have to be for our country. He’s for China and I’m for USA, and that’s the way it’s got to be.”

A State Department official said the Trump administration welcomes the debate in the U.S. foreign policy community, but pushed back on the notion that the Trump administration is “hostile” to China.

“The United States is not hostile to China. In fact, we continue to seek a constructive, results-oriented relationship with China,” the official wrote in an email. “China has chosen a confrontational approach that extends well beyond its relationship with the United States.”

Still, some veteran China hands worry that Trump’s approach to China presages a new Red Scare in Washington, reminiscent of Joseph McCarthy’s wild accusations in the 1950s that hundreds of government officials were Soviet sympathizers. Some worry that people of Chinese descent, including U.S. citizens, could face discrimination as a result.

“I lack confidence in the ability of the American body politic, not just the Trump administration, at this point in our political history — especially when there’s so much racism, so much anti-immigration sentiment,,” said Susan Shirk, who chairs the 21st Century China Center at the University of California-San Diego. “It’s kind of bringing out some of the worst impulses.”

At times, such pushback has been met with hostility inside the Beltway. Anti-China groups, both new and old, have targeted what they derisively call the China “engagers.”

At a mid-July briefing of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, Frank Gaffney, a longtime Washington figure better known for Islamophobic views, accused these “engagers” of pining for a past approach that “has proven to be an exercise in submission, accommodation and futility as the Chinese Communists have proven to be more monolithic and increasingly hostile than their apologists in this country acknowledge.”

The committee — which relaunched earlier this year after previously existing in iterations that focused on the Soviet Union and Islamist terrorists — includes Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide and hero of the nationalist movement. Bannon, who has predicted the U.S. and China will eventually go to war, was one of the Trump aides who fiercely criticized Thornton before her retirement.

“The political mood means there’s no upside to arguing for engaging China. There’s just a downside,” said Philip Gordon, who held Europe and Middle East-related roles in the Obama administration and who signed the first letter. “But if you’re in this business, and you care about policy and want to be involved in the policy debate, you can’t let that entirely shut you down.”

Others say those who want to engage with China are exaggerating Trump’s policy as being overly hostile to China, and that what’s really driving them is anti-Trump sentiment. In many ways, this group argues, there’s mostly continuity in the U.S.-Chinese relationship. The U.S. maintains a robust diplomatic relationship with China, for one thing. And aside from Trump’s trade push, the relationship has not changed too dramatically, they argue.

“In the president’s mind, China is not an enemy. He’s the head of a commercial republic. He wants to do what he says, which is make very tough trade deals,” said Brian Kennedy, chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger: China.

Some observers wonder whether the spat might cause China to view the U.S. through an even more antagonistic lens, given that Beijing closely monitors such Washington debates. In an opinion column in the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party organ, one writer blasted the rebuttal letter’s characterizations of China.

“The implication is that the U.S. is the regime that brings most peace to humanity, which is astonishing,” the author wrote. “The U.S. did bring development and security to mankind, but that was long ago. After reading the letter, one doubts whether the writers are criticizing China or the U.S. itself?”

There also is a generational divide in the U.S. debate: younger China hands tend to be more hawkish than their predecessors. Notably, many in the younger crowd declined to sign on to the first letter warning against the drift in China policy, worried it was too nostalgic for a China that no longer exists.

“This is what happens when paradigms die,” one younger China analyst said.

But many of these same people also dismissed the rebuttal letter as one written by hard-liners who lack a serious understanding of multidimensional U.S.-China relationship.

Thornton said that people with more experience in international relations recognize that there are limits to what the U.S. can do in shaping the destiny of other countries. Ultimately, she insisted, there needs to be a robust debate about the nature of U.S. policy toward China, not blind submission to the idea that the U.S. has to be ever-tougher toward Beijing.

“I’m not romantic about China. I’m not romantic about anything,” Thornton said. “I am practical, and I’m not trying to change China. I’m trying to get things for the United States.”

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[motherpsyduck]

House Guest

Chapter 4: Reckless Scorpion

You turn to see what Trevor was going to say or do next, but he’s already near the entrance of the building. You follow and watch him greet the bouncer then strut into his establishment. You give a passing nod to the large bouncer and enter Vanilla Unicorn. As you turn the corner you see a strip pole on a stage with a woman grinding on the long metal beam that connects to the ceiling. The heavy bass from the music makes your ribcage rattle inside you. You can’t help but stare at the woman as she does her routine. She’s mesmerising. You’re trying to enjoy the pole dancer but can’t help but hear a faint voice calling your name. It’s difficult to hear which direction it’s being shouted from as the music is too loud to hear very much over it. It’s also so poorly lit inside that you squint to focus your gaze but still can’t pinpoint where the voice is coming from. Then you spot a heavy upper arm reach up to catch your attention, it’s waving. It’s Trevor’s and he’s calling you over to the bar. You inhale some clammy air and approach him.

“What?” You shout to Trevor before he slides you a shot.

“Here.”

“What’s this for?” You ask.

“It’s an apology for earlier, I got carried away.” Trevor held his shot glass up to clink with yours. You picked yours up and reciprocated the gesture. You downed the amber liquid before Trevor, and slammed your glass down on the bar.

“Apology accepted.” You croak from your throat tingling.

“Alright! I like a woman who can handle a drink.” Trevor gulps down his glass and grunts. “Two more please barkeep!” The lady behind the bar pours another shot into both of your glasses. “As far as stuck up colleges go, which is pretty much all of them, why did you choose a shithole like LS of all the places?” Trevor asked then drank another shot. You both lean on the bar with your elbows and watch the pole dancer. Without taking your eyes of the woman on stage, you answered him.

“I didn’t really have a choice, I was chosen at random. Tracey signed herself up to house foreign students and I wanted to live somewhere new for a while. I didn’t know or care where I went.” You replied honestly.

“Things are rough at home huh?”

“You could say that.” You turn and down your second shot to try and numb any emotions that were manifesting. You request another shot, but Trevor lowers your hand. The bar maid waits for Trevor’s confirmation before she decides to pour.

“Hey, slow down there missy. Michael won’t be too happy if I take you back drunk as skunk now would he?”

“What do you care?” You yank your arm from Trevor’s grasp. He’s confused.

“I don’t. Thought you might though.”

“Well I don’t. I want to drink.” You push your glass closer to the bar maid and she glances at Trevor. He waves his hand and she proceeds to pour you another shot. You toss it down your neck and place the glass back on the bar. The bar maid finishes pouring more whiskey in Trevor’s shot glass and you watch him swallow it down his thick throat. You’re studying his Cut Here tattoo. You admire how original it is. He catches you staring at him and places his glass back down on the bar. Trevor wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and leans in close. You can already feel the effects of the alcohol on your system.

“Alright sweetheart, I’ll show you how to fuckin’ party.”

After a few more shots of vodka and whiskey whilst trying to keep up with Trevor, the two of you stumble out of the door of the strip club and Trevor hails a taxi. While you wait, you’re curious as to why your jean pocket is vibrating. You feel around clumsily and slide your vibrating phone and squint at the screen. When your vision stayed still the bright glass read: “Tracey Calling”. You’re about to answer it before Trevor pulls you into a cab. The two of you fall into the backseat and Trevor slurs something to the driver and orders him to change the radio station. Your phone has stopped vibrating in your hand and you remember you’re still holding it so you glance at the screen again. “10 Missed Calls from Tracey”. You decide to worry about it later and slip it back into your jean pocket.

It doesn’t take very long for the cabby to bring the car to a halt outside a nightclub. You ducked your head to look out the window your heavier-than-usual head was resting on, and your brain slowly registered the letters into words that spelled out “Bahamas Mamas”. This city really likes to use pink neon on their signs. After the cabbie scrambles for the money Trevor carelessly throws at him, you both exit the cab and enter the night club. It’s not much different to Vanilla Unicorn except the air is less warm and there aren’t women stuck to poles on a stage. Mike Posner’s Cooler Than Me is playing as you stagger to the bar. You clink glasses with Trevor again and make a sour face as the strong alcohol burns your throat.

“You’re a-a-strange one.” Trevor sways as his brain comes up with the words slowly.

“... What?” You reply trying your hardest to look Trevor in the eye and also keeping your legs from turning fully into jelly.

“You’re a-like-a... kid... but you’re not... you have an old head... on young shoulders.” Trevor signals the bar tender for more alcohol.

“Did-did you just call my head old?” The conversation may as well have been nonsense at this point but Trevor was trying to compliment you somehow. He nearly spills his newly poured shot on you as he raises his hand in exclamation.

“Yeah! In a good way... your mind is mature y’know?” You’ve lost count how many shots you and Trevor have swallowed up to this point. “Amigo! Dos beers por favour!” Trevor shouts to the bar man. The bar man ignores Trevor. You glance over and discover why, the barman is trying to chat up an attractive woman. Trevor waits for a few seconds but then reaches his long arm over the bar and steals two bottles of beer for himself and you. You gasp quietly and cover your mouth and giggle. After a few tries of completely missing the bar, Trevor clips the bottle caps off at an angle on the side of the bar and hands you yours. You take a huge swig and thank him.

The two of you lean on the bar waiting for the other to suggest you move to the dance floor. You listen and begin to recognise songs that are playing in the club and the next one that you can hear makes you very excited. Yeah by Usher begins playing and you turn to Trevor open mouthed and smile. He smiles widely back at you. You’re excitement rubs off on him but he has no idea why.

“I FUCKING LOVE THIS SONG! C’MON!” You hold Trevor by the hand and he drags his toes as he’s pulled to the dance floor.

When you reach a gap in the crowd you let go of his hot hand. You close your eyes and are completely and utterly in the moment dancing. You don’t care if you look ridiculous you’re swaying and moving to the music. Trevor can’t stop staring at you. He blinks hard and raises his eyebrows after taking another glug of his beer to watch you in the dim, smoky light. His jaw is hanging slightly. As you move your body, your hair is illuminated every now and then from the strobe lights rotating and stretching around the room. Once you open your eyes and see Trevor trying his best to dance with his long flailing limbs. The sight just makes you smile.

As he’s turning, you swing him around by one of his hard shoulders. Trevor looks down at you and moistens his throat with some beer. You eye up his lips and whisper in his ear to tease him.

“Follow me.” Trevor hears you loud and clear and you find a quiet corner of the dance floor and push him up against the dark wall. He grunts with pleasure as he hits the wall with force. Trevor gives you a half smile and an evil stare that sends you wild. Your hands are slowly caressing his solid, muscular chest on top of his army green shirt. Your bodies are inches from each other as you drunkenly kiss his mouth. He’s gentler than you expected until his tongue forced its way into your mouth. You’re still kissing Trevor and feel him inhaling air in small, quick bursts as your hand hovers and touches the crotch of his jeans. The last thing you remember feeling is Trevor’s grip strengthening on your behind as you stroke his hardening penis.

-

You’re startled by an unknown, harsh buzzing sound that rudely awakens you. You’re half dead when you pull open your eyes but all you can see is complete darkness. Ugh. What is that noise? You groan at the muffled music you can hear and toss and turn to try and to go back to sleep but you misjudge the length of what you thought was your bed and roll onto a sticky floor. You squint and blink your eyes to moisten them before focusing on your surroundings. Even blinking was making your head throb. You rub your eyes and try to register where you were, but you don’t recognise this room. You exhale with frustration and run your fingers through your hair to try and tame the bed hair. You begin to feel a strange chill and look down at yourself to investigate why, and finally realise you’re only wearing your lacy knickers. You feel around for the blanket as you’re vision is still slightly blury. Thankfully the sheet still held some of your warmth and you wrapped yourself in it like it was a towel.

You hunt down the source of the loud vibrations. It was your phone on a desk next to a computer monitor. It takes you some time to focus on the screen and you read: 10 Missed Calls from Tracey, 4 Texts from Tracey. You swipe to unlock your phone and read the following text messages:

“Y/N where are you?”

“Seriously, where did you go? Jimmy said he saw you from his window. You got in a car with Trevor and Franklin?”

“My mom and dad are worried. WHERE ARE YOU?”

“This isn’t funny anymore Y/N.”

You glance up from your phone and try to figure out where exactly you were. You look through the pile of papers next to the keyboard to find something, anything. You see a familiar business logo and name in a header of a printed letter. Oh no. Vanilla Unicorn. I’m at the fucking strip club?! Where the fuck are my clothes?! But just as you turn to pinpoint their location the door to the room swings open and you just stand there frozen.

“Good morning!” Trevor is annoyingly loud and chipper. You watch him check his phone for the time. “Wow, or should I say afternoon.” He puts his phone away and approaches you. You hold a hand up and stretched out your arm defensively to keep him away.

“Trevor, where are my clothes?” You say slowly and with a very serious tone. You weren’t in the mood to be playful, not with this bad of a hangover.

“Oh. No ‘thanks for letting me stay on your sofa Trevor’ or ‘thanks for giving me a blanket to cover my naked body Trevor’. I gave you the courtesy of partying with THE Trevor Philips and this is the thanks I get?” You weren’t sure if Trevor was joking or was genuinely irritated.

“Just tell me where my clothes are Trevor.” You’ve lost your patience. Trevor frowns his thick brow and exhales with his tongue poking the roof of his mouth. He wanted to see you squirm for a few more seconds before answering.

“Over there on that box of flyers.” Trevor points lazily.

“Thanks.” You rush over to the box by the back door of the office and see your clothes hanging on the side of the box as well as in messy clumps next to it. You bring the pile of clothing to the couch and were just about to remove your towel that was wrapped around you, before remembering Trevor was still present.

“Trev, do you mind?”

“Not at all cupcake. Not-at-all.” Trevor says with a creepy chuckle. You stare him down so he realises you’re serious and he rolls his dark coffee coloured eyes and faces his back to you. You throw your clothes on as quickly as you can and toss the blanket back onto the sofa. You slip your phone into your pocket and sit yourself on the sofa to tie your shoes.

“Ok. You can look now” Trevor turns and is about to give you another cheeky quip before you interrupt him. “By the way Trevor, can you tell me why I woke up practically naked in your strip club please?” You cannot for the life of you recall a memory from beyond the night club you visited and you don’t remember removing any item of clothing.

“You don’t remember?” Trevor says with a serious look.

“No.” You massaged your temples of your skull for some relief.

“Are you sure?” Trevor was dragging this on as long as he could. He leaned against the desk opposite the sofa you sat on. You had to look up at him.

“YES I’M SURE! Can you just tell me please?!”

“You stripped yourself darlin’. I had nothing to do with de-clothing you.” Trevor raised his palms.

“I stripped... myself?... Why?”

“You wanted to strip.” Trevor verified as he crossed his arms. He seemed to be keeping in a laugh to himself about something you had no idea about.

“I know. You just said that. I’m just trying to remember why-” Bits of last night came rushing back to you. When they did, you gasped in horror at what you eventually remember. You spoke whilst exhaling. “... NOOO”

“YEEEESSS!” Trevor was delighted at your embarrassment.

“Please tell me I didn’t. PLEASE” You tried hiding your face.

“I’m sorry to say sugar, well; actually I’m not sorry, that you did in fact walk down the stripper stage wearing just those lacy panties.”

“In front of people?” You squeaked from behind your hands. Trevor nodded sympathetically but then couldn’t stop himself from exploding from laughter. You peak through the gaps in between your fingers and speak. “Are you sure?”

“You gave my girls a run for their money let me tell you. Look, I’ll show you the security footage if you like.” Trevor was revelling in tormenting you and may as well have skipped to the computer to bring up the footage of last night. You lowered your hands and stood next to Trevor as the two of you watched the show from last night. You saw yourself staggering and stumbling on stage and try to swing on the pole at the end of the runway, only to fall off disgracefully hit your head on the railing below you. You reach for the back of your skull and wince from the forgotten pain from the bump. “See! Naked. Naked. Naked. Naked.” Trevor points at the monitor as he presses a key on the keyboard so the footage cuts to different angles.

“Wait, that can’t be me” You point at the screen. Trevor looks at you unsure what conclusion you were about to come to. “I don’t have a tattoo there- OW” You poke a sore area at the top of your left breast with the tips of your fingers. You’re confused as to why you felt pain and look down your top and stare at your skin in horror. You lick your thumb and try to rub at your skin but it was permanent and you winced as you touched it. You’re distracted enough to not notice Trevor trying to peek down your shirt also. You drop the material of your shirt and place your palm on your eyelids.

“I forgot about that.” Trevor pointed at your breast and spoke. You watched his face light up as he reminisced about the night before. “You dragged us to a tattoo place before we came back here. Begged the guy to draw something, what was it?”

“It’s a black scorpion.” You reply with an annoyed shrug. You then glance at Trevor’s hands resting on the keyboard. You notice he has a very similar scorpion tattoo on his right hand in between his thumb and index finger. “It’s the same one on your hand!” You point at Trevor’s hand and he looks down at it with a frown then back at you. You sigh and pull your t-shirt down to only reveal the scorpion tattoo. Trevor was only allowed to glance at it for a couple seconds before you position the material back over to cover the tattoo. It seemed to align with Trevor’s on his hand as if he was cupping your breast.  “I bet you put me up to this.” You say through your teeth.

“Probably, but I can’t remember sugar.” Trevor replies with a cheerful tone. It makes your blood boil. He stands up straight, away from the computer screen and leads you to the back door of the office.

“Where are we going now?” You ask as you shield your eyes from the blinding sunlight. You follow Trevor to his red pickup truck parked around the front of the building. Trevor replies as he gets close to his car.

“De Santa residence. I said I’d get you home, and what am I if not a man of my word? Michael will be worried sick!” Trevor said as he sat in the driver’s seat and closed the door. You study his choice of vehicle. You’re curious as to why there’s a one eyed teddy bear wearing a thong pinned to the front grill of the truck, but decide to go with why there’s no roof to the car. You climb into the car with Trevor and point with your thumb to where the roof should be.

“What if it rains?”

“Then you’ll get wet.” Trevor said harshly. His bluntness made you laugh. Laughing made your head hurt. You pull your seatbelt down and lock it in place and Trevor puts his keys in the ignition. Soon the two of you were arguing over which radio station to listen to whilst Trevor drove erratically through traffic.

-

You recognise the familiar curved driveway of Tracey’s house and before the car came to a hard stop Trevor punches the horn a few times to signal your arrival. You remove yourself from the truck and watch as Tracey races out the front door. She hangs up her phone and calls back into the house confirming it is you returning. She runs from the door to hug you. You’re nearly pushed backward from the amount of force Tracey hit you with. Amanda emerges and then Michael looking as furious as one another. Tracey lets go of you and walks with you back to the house. Amanda stops Tracey from taking you inside. Trevor steps out and stands in front of his truck to observe.

“Just a minute Tracey,” Amanda holds her arm out. Tracey doesn’t argue. You watch Amanda turn to you. “Y/N where have you been?!”

“With Trevor.” Amanda glances at Trevor and he smiles proudly. She gives him a disgusted look.

“I can see that.” She turns back to you expecting more of an explanation. You don’t give one so Amanda continues to speak. “Look Y/N I can’t control what you do in your spare time. You’re not a child and I’m not your mother, but the college did assign us as your guardians whilst you’re studying. If you’re going to live in our home you have to tell us when you’ll be out all hours of the night. You can come and go as you please just give us a heads up next time and answer your phone.”

“Yes Mrs De Santa. Sorry.”

“What the fuck were you doing with Trevor anyway? Jimmy said he saw you two get in a car with Franklin.” Michael piped up. He began speaking directly to you but soon turned to Trevor who answered for you.

“Well, that’s none of your concern Mikey boy.” Trevor snapped back.

“It is my concern when it involves her! We’re her guardians T. For Christ sake, she looks like she’s been taking meth or some shit.” Michael strains his voice. Amanda and Tracey look at Trevor for a reply. You worry and look to Trevor in horror. Trevor shakes his head at you and you sigh with relief.

“She hasn’t been taking meth, calm down sugar tits.”

“Then what were you doing? She doesn’t look well T.” You were getting annoyed how much Michael was talking to others about you in front of you, but not actually talking directly to you. You’re patience was short due to your hangover.

“HEY. I can speak for myself!” You shout. Michael is surprised and looks at you waiting for your next word. “It doesn’t matter where I’ve been or what I did. It’s done. I don’t have to answer to you or Mrs De Santa, sorry, Amanda. I’m sorry I didn’t answer my calls, that was stupid and reckless and it won’t happen again. I would like to keep living here if you’ll have me; your home and family are lovely but I don’t need to be checked up on.”

“Clearly!” Michael replies with sarcasm. “I mean, you look fine! You can barely stand.”

“I drank alcohol, that’s all I did. I’ve seen plenty of other adults drink alcohol.” You shot back.

“Well that’s not all you did...” Trevor mumbles. Thankfully only you heard it. Michael doesn’t know what else to say. Amanda waits for anyone else to add anything before she places her hand on your shoulder.

“Y/N what Michael’s trying to say is that we were worried. We would be the ones in the shit with the college if we lost you. From now on please tell me if you decide you need to get away. Ok?” Amanda tries to defuse the situation and rubs the side of your arm then smiles at you.

“I will.” You smile back.

“Let me put mine and Michael’s numbers in your phone so if you can’t reach me you can reach Michael.” You pass your phone to Amanda and she puts the numbers into your contacts and hands your phone back to you.

“You have my number right?” Tracey finally feels it’s safe to speak.

“Yes. You gave it to me yesterday in class.” You smile at her.

“Oh yeah! Ok I’m going inside. Nice to see you again Uncle Trevor!” Tracey waves goodbye to Trevor and disappears inside with Amanda.

“You too Tracey.” Trevor says with a genuine smile. Amanda rudely tries to ignore Trevor as she makes her way inside but he’s aware of this and waves her goodbye. “BYE BYE AMANDA!” Trevor begins walking back to the driver’s seat and opens the door.

“Thanks Trevor.” You say as he gets into his truck.

“My pleasure Y/N.” Trevor nods and starts his car. He stretches his chunky arm over the headrest of the passenger seat, and his neck over his shoulder to reverse his car out of Michael’s drive and leaves. Once Trevor is out of sight, you turn back to face Michael.

“How are you not completely and utterly shit scared of him?” Michael asks bluntly.

“I dunno.” You shrug whilst looking at your feet. You’re giddy from spending time with Trevor but also from being so tired. You look into Michael’s baby blue eyes. “How are you not shit scared of him?”

“I am.” Michael replies as he lets you enter his home first. He shakes his head as he follows you in. The front door swings back and closes. - [<-CH3] [CH5->] [<-CH1]

[txny-archxr]

HIT, HIIT…or HIIRT? – Theory To Practice

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe 

The ARXFit Alpha providing this particular session’s HIIRT train caboose.  Huh…

Curious as to what the differences are between HIT, HIIT and HIIRT?  Well, what follows are what I consider to be the high points.  Tomes could be written on the similarities between these methodologies, but I think the following gives a pretty good overview.

First, a couple of definitions:

HIT – High Intensity Training: The area covered by the overarching umbrella of classic High Intensity Training (HIT) is wide indeed, including such broad-stroke methodologies as classic, single-set-to-failure HIT, and various super-slow routines.  Included too, are all manner of TUL (time under load), repetition tempo, and rest period manipulations. Methodologies here are largely those popularized by Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and bodybuilding’s Mike Mentzer.

Note: for info on “training to failure” see this post.

HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training: Most studies on classic High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) focus on only sprint (running) and/or cycle sprint sessions, because that’s what’s available and most easily studied in a lab setting.  A good article summarizing HIIT, and its positive effects, here.

HIIRT – High Intensity Interval Resistance Training: At it’s most basic, HIIRT is a powerful burst of output (typically 20 – 80 seconds), followed by a scaled rest period.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Think HIIT Tabata sprints — but with heavy resistance exercises.  Brief, brutal and basic are key words here.  I’ve fused elements of CrossFit, and the work of folks such as Scott Abel, Istavan Javorek,  and Joel Jamieson (in addition to whole slew of others) — along with my own, 35+ years-in-the-trenches experience — to create my own methodology.  Hints of HIT?  You know it.  Shades of HIIT?  Yeah, that too.  I come from a background of slinging iron as a way of bettering performance on the track and on the gridiron.  I came of age in an atmosphere that knew no S&C dogma — if it worked, it worked, and that’s all that ultimately mattered.  And that’s the credo I operate by today.

HIT, HIIT, or HIIRT — what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, the distinction lay in the overall intent of each individual “set” (or output burst).  HIT attempts to attain total muscular failure (within an allotted time window) in the targeted musculature, whereas HIIT and HIIRT attempt to attain as many repetitions (or highest cumulative work or power output) as possible within a set, or established time period.  With HIT, each exercise is generally performed once through, to failure.  In HIIT or HIIRT, an exercise may be performed 2, 3 or even many more times within a workout.  I say “generally” here because there is much overlapping and gray area within these methodologies.  HIIT is definitely a conditioning-biased protocol — i.e., Metabolic Conditioning, or MetCon, for short — whereas we can consider HIIRT a hybrid of both HIT and HIIT.  And a HIIRT session may be, depending upon how it is set up, strength, hypertrophy, or MetCon (strength endurance) biased. Confused? Don’t be; this will all make sense soon enough.

Can you give an example?

Sure.   Here’s an example of what I consider to be a classic HIIRT workout: six distinct exercises, 3 upper body dominant exercises alternated with 3 lower body dominant, all set in a circuit format.  Each exercise is performed all-out, full-bore (as many reps or the most force and/or power developed as possible) for 1 full minute.  Then, rest for 1 full minute before beginning the next exercise in succession.  Wash, rinse and repeat.  Each exercise will be performed twice during the 2-round duration of the workout.  If you’re doing the math, we’ve got 24 minutes worth of work and rest here.  Even allowing for some degree of spillover, we can still get this workout done in 30 minutes.  Brief, brutal, basic…and extremely effective.  Consider this scenario:

(A1) Tbar swings (A2) Powermax 360 push-pull/cross-punch (30 secs each exercise, shift on the fly) (A3) ARXFit leg press (A4) ARXFit flat press (A5) Reverse lunge iso hold with dumbbell curls (30 secs each leg, shift on the fly) (A6) Blast strap rows

The actual exercises are not so important at this juncture; what is important is the overall workout setup.  I could crank the intensity up a notch here by reducing the rest period between each exercise to say 45 or even 30 seconds, by bumping-up the work period, or by increasing the exercise resistance.  By virtue of me using resistance exercises here I’ve just morphed a classic HIIT setup (which could have used sprints, hops, jumps, bodyweight exercises, etc.) into a resistance-based interval circuit, or HIIRT, with, in this example, a decidedly MetCon (metabolic conditioning) bias.

So achieving total muscular failure is not a goal of a HIIRT session?

Not necessarily.  Remember when I said that there are no hard lines of distinction between these various protocols?  Consider the following, more strength/hypertrophy-biased (as opposed to the previous example’s MetCon-biased), upper body emphasis HIIRT workout:

(A1) OmniFit pec flye x 5 hyper reps (A2) Leverage machine flat press (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (A3) Bent over row 20X0, 7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

(B1) Hip press with bands, (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (B2) Russian leg curls 30X0,  7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

Notice the very HIT-like feel of the flat press and hip press execution.

*note: the (for example) 30X0 annotation denotes the exercise repetition tempo in the eccentric, pause, concentric, pause format.  30X0 would, therefore, be performed with a 3 second negative, followed by no pause leading into a fast-as-possible concentric, with an immediate return to the subsequent negative.  Note, too, that there is a profound difference between “exploding” into the concentric portion of a movement, and “jerking” into the motion.  There is a time and place for ballistic, “jerking” movements for sure — just not with this protocol.

Two rounds of each can certainly be accomplished in 30 minutes if the rest period between exercises is held sufficiently brief (i.e., less than 1 minute). Extending the rest period will require eliminating the pre-exhaust exercise (in this case, the OmniFit flye), which is fine, considering that if a client is not yet up to the fast-paced nature of the workout to begin with, they probably aren’t in need of a pre-exhaust anyway.

So what are the advantages of HIIRT vs other forms of training?

Well, what we’ve done at Efficient Exercise is essentially turn what would be considered a huge disadvantage (a 30-minute session time constraint) into a decided advantage for the client.  Not only do Efficient Exercise clients need only invest an hour or so per week in the studio to achieve an optimum level of health, but that investment pays huge dividends when it comes to effective fat loss and muscle gain.

How does HIIRT maximize fat loss?

Well, there are many ways and associated reasons, but here are the main points to consider:

The bottom line? In order to maximize fat loss, we must elevate growth hormone secretion, minimize insulin spikes, improve muscle insulin sensitivity, and keep cortisol under control.  This is best achieved by keeping training sessions brief, brutal, basic and intermittent.

The other side of the coin is, of course, muscle gain.  To induce muscle growth we must stimulate protein synthesis in muscle tissue.  Protein synthesis is initiated by an exercise/movement that most effectively:

And the take-home message is this: Recruit and fatigue as many muscle fibers as possible, as fast as possible, and ensure adequate post-workout recovery and nutrition following the workouts.  Remember, exercise ought to be considered a high-amplitude signal that subsequently affects the body’s on-going, anabolic hormonal milieu.  Too much is too much; too little is too little.  Profound, I know — and yet it is so very true.

So how do we get these two processes to work hand-in-hand, creating an anabolic environment for muscle growth, while at the same time forcing the body to use fat stores to help meet energy demands?

Note: diet plays a HUGE role here as well.  The focus of this section, though, is exercise protocol selection.

1. Stimulate muscle growth with compound exercises, performed for 6-20 repetitions to failure (if strength/hypertrophy is sought), or for max work or power output (if MetCon biased).

The repetition range, together with the execution tempo, will determine the nature of muscle fiber recruitment. We want to recruit, tax and fully exhaust as many fibers as possible, including slow twitch, intermediate, and fast-twitch fibers. As with all strength exercises, slow twitch fibers are recruited first, then as the muscles fatigue, intermediate and finally fast twitch fibers are recruited if and only if the set is continued until fatigue sets in.

Muscle growth is best achieved when the exercises are performed with controlled eccentric movements and continuous tension. Make an effort to minimize momentum unless the nature of the exercise dictates otherwise.

2. Improve insulin sensitivity by performing a sufficient volume of work.

Multiple (2 or 3) sets performed within the 6-20 repetition range is best for depleting muscle glycogen (and stimulating protein synthesis). During HIIRT training, muscle glycogen is broken down at a rapid rate, which results in improved muscle insulin sensitivity and increased LPL (lipoprotein lipase) activity on muscle tissue, causing nutrients to be preferentially partitioned towards muscle tissue.  Insulin sensitivity increases on muscle cells when glycogen stores are low. When this occurs, nutrients are partitioned into the muscle tissue and fat stores are broken down.

3. Increases in testosterone.

4. Maximize GH production with short rest interval HIIRT circuits.

GH is most effectively released performing strength circuits where both upper and lower body muscles are fully taxed, and keeping rest intervals short.

HIIRT leads to a significant drop in blood pH (via the rapid breakdown of glycogen and subsequent release of hydrogen ions), which in turn triggers increased production in GH.

An interesting aside: contrary to popular belief, it’s not lactic acid that causes muscle burn; this is actually the result of lowered blood pH creating an acidic environment, thereby resulting in that old, familiar, muscle burn and fatigue. The brain senses the situation and increases output of GH.

We know that testosterone is important for recovery, shedding fat and building muscle — but what’s so great about growth hormone?

Plenty.  GH has been shown to stimulate fat breakdown (lipolysis), increase the utilization of fat, and decrease the use of carbohydrate as fuel.  GH has beneficial effects on muscle mass, bone density, body fat, and it can help reverse some of the age-related changes in lean body mass (sarcopenea).

GH has also been shown to act as a suppressive on myostatin.  And myostatin, you may remember, inhibits muscle growth and is a negative regulator of muscle tissue. Higher GH release means lower myostatin expression; lower myostatin can result in increased anabolic activity and an increase in androgen receptor expression.

Research shows that circuit strength training (and high intensity sprint training) are both effective methods for naturally elevating GH secretion in healthy adults.  It is my opinion that these effects can be greatly enhanced by adding a resistance exercise element — HIIRT — to the mix.

*Also*: please check out my post ARXFit, and the Perfect Rep.  Because all of this methodology is less-than-effective unless the basic building blocks are solidified.  And yes, ARXFit for sure enables a perfect repetition, but the lessons learned here can for sure be applied to conventional exercise methods.

Heal thyself, hone thyself, change the world – Keith

This content was originally published here.

from https://makingthebest.com/hit-hiit-or-hiirt-theory-to-practice/

[otaku-douchebag-ponytail]

HIT, HIIT…or HIIRT? – Theory To Practice

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe 

The ARXFit Alpha providing this particular session’s HIIRT train caboose.  Huh…

Curious as to what the differences are between HIT, HIIT and HIIRT?  Well, what follows are what I consider to be the high points.  Tomes could be written on the similarities between these methodologies, but I think the following gives a pretty good overview.

First, a couple of definitions:

HIT – High Intensity Training: The area covered by the overarching umbrella of classic High Intensity Training (HIT) is wide indeed, including such broad-stroke methodologies as classic, single-set-to-failure HIT, and various super-slow routines.  Included too, are all manner of TUL (time under load), repetition tempo, and rest period manipulations. Methodologies here are largely those popularized by Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and bodybuilding’s Mike Mentzer.

Note: for info on “training to failure” see this post.

HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training: Most studies on classic High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) focus on only sprint (running) and/or cycle sprint sessions, because that’s what’s available and most easily studied in a lab setting.  A good article summarizing HIIT, and its positive effects, here.

HIIRT – High Intensity Interval Resistance Training: At it’s most basic, HIIRT is a powerful burst of output (typically 20 – 80 seconds), followed by a scaled rest period.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Think HIIT Tabata sprints — but with heavy resistance exercises.  Brief, brutal and basic are key words here.  I’ve fused elements of CrossFit, and the work of folks such as Scott Abel, Istavan Javorek,  and Joel Jamieson (in addition to whole slew of others) — along with my own, 35+ years-in-the-trenches experience — to create my own methodology.  Hints of HIT?  You know it.  Shades of HIIT?  Yeah, that too.  I come from a background of slinging iron as a way of bettering performance on the track and on the gridiron.  I came of age in an atmosphere that knew no S&C dogma — if it worked, it worked, and that’s all that ultimately mattered.  And that’s the credo I operate by today.

HIT, HIIT, or HIIRT — what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, the distinction lay in the overall intent of each individual “set” (or output burst).  HIT attempts to attain total muscular failure (within an allotted time window) in the targeted musculature, whereas HIIT and HIIRT attempt to attain as many repetitions (or highest cumulative work or power output) as possible within a set, or established time period.  With HIT, each exercise is generally performed once through, to failure.  In HIIT or HIIRT, an exercise may be performed 2, 3 or even many more times within a workout.  I say “generally” here because there is much overlapping and gray area within these methodologies.  HIIT is definitely a conditioning-biased protocol — i.e., Metabolic Conditioning, or MetCon, for short — whereas we can consider HIIRT a hybrid of both HIT and HIIT.  And a HIIRT session may be, depending upon how it is set up, strength, hypertrophy, or MetCon (strength endurance) biased. Confused? Don’t be; this will all make sense soon enough.

Can you give an example?

Sure.   Here’s an example of what I consider to be a classic HIIRT workout: six distinct exercises, 3 upper body dominant exercises alternated with 3 lower body dominant, all set in a circuit format.  Each exercise is performed all-out, full-bore (as many reps or the most force and/or power developed as possible) for 1 full minute.  Then, rest for 1 full minute before beginning the next exercise in succession.  Wash, rinse and repeat.  Each exercise will be performed twice during the 2-round duration of the workout.  If you’re doing the math, we’ve got 24 minutes worth of work and rest here.  Even allowing for some degree of spillover, we can still get this workout done in 30 minutes.  Brief, brutal, basic…and extremely effective.  Consider this scenario:

(A1) Tbar swings (A2) Powermax 360 push-pull/cross-punch (30 secs each exercise, shift on the fly) (A3) ARXFit leg press (A4) ARXFit flat press (A5) Reverse lunge iso hold with dumbbell curls (30 secs each leg, shift on the fly) (A6) Blast strap rows

The actual exercises are not so important at this juncture; what is important is the overall workout setup.  I could crank the intensity up a notch here by reducing the rest period between each exercise to say 45 or even 30 seconds, by bumping-up the work period, or by increasing the exercise resistance.  By virtue of me using resistance exercises here I’ve just morphed a classic HIIT setup (which could have used sprints, hops, jumps, bodyweight exercises, etc.) into a resistance-based interval circuit, or HIIRT, with, in this example, a decidedly MetCon (metabolic conditioning) bias.

So achieving total muscular failure is not a goal of a HIIRT session?

Not necessarily.  Remember when I said that there are no hard lines of distinction between these various protocols?  Consider the following, more strength/hypertrophy-biased (as opposed to the previous example’s MetCon-biased), upper body emphasis HIIRT workout:

(A1) OmniFit pec flye x 5 hyper reps (A2) Leverage machine flat press (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (A3) Bent over row 20X0, 7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

(B1) Hip press with bands, (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (B2) Russian leg curls 30X0,  7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

Notice the very HIT-like feel of the flat press and hip press execution.

*note: the (for example) 30X0 annotation denotes the exercise repetition tempo in the eccentric, pause, concentric, pause format.  30X0 would, therefore, be performed with a 3 second negative, followed by no pause leading into a fast-as-possible concentric, with an immediate return to the subsequent negative.  Note, too, that there is a profound difference between “exploding” into the concentric portion of a movement, and “jerking” into the motion.  There is a time and place for ballistic, “jerking” movements for sure — just not with this protocol.

Two rounds of each can certainly be accomplished in 30 minutes if the rest period between exercises is held sufficiently brief (i.e., less than 1 minute). Extending the rest period will require eliminating the pre-exhaust exercise (in this case, the OmniFit flye), which is fine, considering that if a client is not yet up to the fast-paced nature of the workout to begin with, they probably aren’t in need of a pre-exhaust anyway.

So what are the advantages of HIIRT vs other forms of training?

Well, what we’ve done at Efficient Exercise is essentially turn what would be considered a huge disadvantage (a 30-minute session time constraint) into a decided advantage for the client.  Not only do Efficient Exercise clients need only invest an hour or so per week in the studio to achieve an optimum level of health, but that investment pays huge dividends when it comes to effective fat loss and muscle gain.

How does HIIRT maximize fat loss?

Well, there are many ways and associated reasons, but here are the main points to consider:

The bottom line? In order to maximize fat loss, we must elevate growth hormone secretion, minimize insulin spikes, improve muscle insulin sensitivity, and keep cortisol under control.  This is best achieved by keeping training sessions brief, brutal, basic and intermittent.

The other side of the coin is, of course, muscle gain.  To induce muscle growth we must stimulate protein synthesis in muscle tissue.  Protein synthesis is initiated by an exercise/movement that most effectively:

And the take-home message is this: Recruit and fatigue as many muscle fibers as possible, as fast as possible, and ensure adequate post-workout recovery and nutrition following the workouts.  Remember, exercise ought to be considered a high-amplitude signal that subsequently affects the body’s on-going, anabolic hormonal milieu.  Too much is too much; too little is too little.  Profound, I know — and yet it is so very true.

So how do we get these two processes to work hand-in-hand, creating an anabolic environment for muscle growth, while at the same time forcing the body to use fat stores to help meet energy demands?

Note: diet plays a HUGE role here as well.  The focus of this section, though, is exercise protocol selection.

1. Stimulate muscle growth with compound exercises, performed for 6-20 repetitions to failure (if strength/hypertrophy is sought), or for max work or power output (if MetCon biased).

The repetition range, together with the execution tempo, will determine the nature of muscle fiber recruitment. We want to recruit, tax and fully exhaust as many fibers as possible, including slow twitch, intermediate, and fast-twitch fibers. As with all strength exercises, slow twitch fibers are recruited first, then as the muscles fatigue, intermediate and finally fast twitch fibers are recruited if and only if the set is continued until fatigue sets in.

Muscle growth is best achieved when the exercises are performed with controlled eccentric movements and continuous tension. Make an effort to minimize momentum unless the nature of the exercise dictates otherwise.

2. Improve insulin sensitivity by performing a sufficient volume of work.

Multiple (2 or 3) sets performed within the 6-20 repetition range is best for depleting muscle glycogen (and stimulating protein synthesis). During HIIRT training, muscle glycogen is broken down at a rapid rate, which results in improved muscle insulin sensitivity and increased LPL (lipoprotein lipase) activity on muscle tissue, causing nutrients to be preferentially partitioned towards muscle tissue.  Insulin sensitivity increases on muscle cells when glycogen stores are low. When this occurs, nutrients are partitioned into the muscle tissue and fat stores are broken down.

3. Increases in testosterone.

4. Maximize GH production with short rest interval HIIRT circuits.

GH is most effectively released performing strength circuits where both upper and lower body muscles are fully taxed, and keeping rest intervals short.

HIIRT leads to a significant drop in blood pH (via the rapid breakdown of glycogen and subsequent release of hydrogen ions), which in turn triggers increased production in GH.

An interesting aside: contrary to popular belief, it’s not lactic acid that causes muscle burn; this is actually the result of lowered blood pH creating an acidic environment, thereby resulting in that old, familiar, muscle burn and fatigue. The brain senses the situation and increases output of GH.

We know that testosterone is important for recovery, shedding fat and building muscle — but what’s so great about growth hormone?

Plenty.  GH has been shown to stimulate fat breakdown (lipolysis), increase the utilization of fat, and decrease the use of carbohydrate as fuel.  GH has beneficial effects on muscle mass, bone density, body fat, and it can help reverse some of the age-related changes in lean body mass (sarcopenea).

GH has also been shown to act as a suppressive on myostatin.  And myostatin, you may remember, inhibits muscle growth and is a negative regulator of muscle tissue. Higher GH release means lower myostatin expression; lower myostatin can result in increased anabolic activity and an increase in androgen receptor expression.

Research shows that circuit strength training (and high intensity sprint training) are both effective methods for naturally elevating GH secretion in healthy adults.  It is my opinion that these effects can be greatly enhanced by adding a resistance exercise element — HIIRT — to the mix.

*Also*: please check out my post ARXFit, and the Perfect Rep.  Because all of this methodology is less-than-effective unless the basic building blocks are solidified.  And yes, ARXFit for sure enables a perfect repetition, but the lessons learned here can for sure be applied to conventional exercise methods.

Heal thyself, hone thyself, change the world – Keith

This content was originally published here.

from https://makingthebest.com/hit-hiit-or-hiirt-theory-to-practice/

[the-yaoi-galla]

HIT, HIIT…or HIIRT? – Theory To Practice

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe 

The ARXFit Alpha providing this particular session’s HIIRT train caboose.  Huh…

Curious as to what the differences are between HIT, HIIT and HIIRT?  Well, what follows are what I consider to be the high points.  Tomes could be written on the similarities between these methodologies, but I think the following gives a pretty good overview.

First, a couple of definitions:

HIT – High Intensity Training: The area covered by the overarching umbrella of classic High Intensity Training (HIT) is wide indeed, including such broad-stroke methodologies as classic, single-set-to-failure HIT, and various super-slow routines.  Included too, are all manner of TUL (time under load), repetition tempo, and rest period manipulations. Methodologies here are largely those popularized by Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and bodybuilding’s Mike Mentzer.

Note: for info on “training to failure” see this post.

HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training: Most studies on classic High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) focus on only sprint (running) and/or cycle sprint sessions, because that’s what’s available and most easily studied in a lab setting.  A good article summarizing HIIT, and its positive effects, here.

HIIRT – High Intensity Interval Resistance Training: At it’s most basic, HIIRT is a powerful burst of output (typically 20 – 80 seconds), followed by a scaled rest period.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Think HIIT Tabata sprints — but with heavy resistance exercises.  Brief, brutal and basic are key words here.  I’ve fused elements of CrossFit, and the work of folks such as Scott Abel, Istavan Javorek,  and Joel Jamieson (in addition to whole slew of others) — along with my own, 35+ years-in-the-trenches experience — to create my own methodology.  Hints of HIT?  You know it.  Shades of HIIT?  Yeah, that too.  I come from a background of slinging iron as a way of bettering performance on the track and on the gridiron.  I came of age in an atmosphere that knew no S&C dogma — if it worked, it worked, and that’s all that ultimately mattered.  And that’s the credo I operate by today.

HIT, HIIT, or HIIRT — what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, the distinction lay in the overall intent of each individual “set” (or output burst).  HIT attempts to attain total muscular failure (within an allotted time window) in the targeted musculature, whereas HIIT and HIIRT attempt to attain as many repetitions (or highest cumulative work or power output) as possible within a set, or established time period.  With HIT, each exercise is generally performed once through, to failure.  In HIIT or HIIRT, an exercise may be performed 2, 3 or even many more times within a workout.  I say “generally” here because there is much overlapping and gray area within these methodologies.  HIIT is definitely a conditioning-biased protocol — i.e., Metabolic Conditioning, or MetCon, for short — whereas we can consider HIIRT a hybrid of both HIT and HIIT.  And a HIIRT session may be, depending upon how it is set up, strength, hypertrophy, or MetCon (strength endurance) biased. Confused? Don’t be; this will all make sense soon enough.

Can you give an example?

Sure.   Here’s an example of what I consider to be a classic HIIRT workout: six distinct exercises, 3 upper body dominant exercises alternated with 3 lower body dominant, all set in a circuit format.  Each exercise is performed all-out, full-bore (as many reps or the most force and/or power developed as possible) for 1 full minute.  Then, rest for 1 full minute before beginning the next exercise in succession.  Wash, rinse and repeat.  Each exercise will be performed twice during the 2-round duration of the workout.  If you’re doing the math, we’ve got 24 minutes worth of work and rest here.  Even allowing for some degree of spillover, we can still get this workout done in 30 minutes.  Brief, brutal, basic…and extremely effective.  Consider this scenario:

(A1) Tbar swings (A2) Powermax 360 push-pull/cross-punch (30 secs each exercise, shift on the fly) (A3) ARXFit leg press (A4) ARXFit flat press (A5) Reverse lunge iso hold with dumbbell curls (30 secs each leg, shift on the fly) (A6) Blast strap rows

The actual exercises are not so important at this juncture; what is important is the overall workout setup.  I could crank the intensity up a notch here by reducing the rest period between each exercise to say 45 or even 30 seconds, by bumping-up the work period, or by increasing the exercise resistance.  By virtue of me using resistance exercises here I’ve just morphed a classic HIIT setup (which could have used sprints, hops, jumps, bodyweight exercises, etc.) into a resistance-based interval circuit, or HIIRT, with, in this example, a decidedly MetCon (metabolic conditioning) bias.

So achieving total muscular failure is not a goal of a HIIRT session?

Not necessarily.  Remember when I said that there are no hard lines of distinction between these various protocols?  Consider the following, more strength/hypertrophy-biased (as opposed to the previous example’s MetCon-biased), upper body emphasis HIIRT workout:

(A1) OmniFit pec flye x 5 hyper reps (A2) Leverage machine flat press (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (A3) Bent over row 20X0, 7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

(B1) Hip press with bands, (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (B2) Russian leg curls 30X0,  7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

Notice the very HIT-like feel of the flat press and hip press execution.

*note: the (for example) 30X0 annotation denotes the exercise repetition tempo in the eccentric, pause, concentric, pause format.  30X0 would, therefore, be performed with a 3 second negative, followed by no pause leading into a fast-as-possible concentric, with an immediate return to the subsequent negative.  Note, too, that there is a profound difference between “exploding” into the concentric portion of a movement, and “jerking” into the motion.  There is a time and place for ballistic, “jerking” movements for sure — just not with this protocol.

Two rounds of each can certainly be accomplished in 30 minutes if the rest period between exercises is held sufficiently brief (i.e., less than 1 minute). Extending the rest period will require eliminating the pre-exhaust exercise (in this case, the OmniFit flye), which is fine, considering that if a client is not yet up to the fast-paced nature of the workout to begin with, they probably aren’t in need of a pre-exhaust anyway.

So what are the advantages of HIIRT vs other forms of training?

Well, what we’ve done at Efficient Exercise is essentially turn what would be considered a huge disadvantage (a 30-minute session time constraint) into a decided advantage for the client.  Not only do Efficient Exercise clients need only invest an hour or so per week in the studio to achieve an optimum level of health, but that investment pays huge dividends when it comes to effective fat loss and muscle gain.

How does HIIRT maximize fat loss?

Well, there are many ways and associated reasons, but here are the main points to consider:

The bottom line? In order to maximize fat loss, we must elevate growth hormone secretion, minimize insulin spikes, improve muscle insulin sensitivity, and keep cortisol under control.  This is best achieved by keeping training sessions brief, brutal, basic and intermittent.

The other side of the coin is, of course, muscle gain.  To induce muscle growth we must stimulate protein synthesis in muscle tissue.  Protein synthesis is initiated by an exercise/movement that most effectively:

And the take-home message is this: Recruit and fatigue as many muscle fibers as possible, as fast as possible, and ensure adequate post-workout recovery and nutrition following the workouts.  Remember, exercise ought to be considered a high-amplitude signal that subsequently affects the body’s on-going, anabolic hormonal milieu.  Too much is too much; too little is too little.  Profound, I know — and yet it is so very true.

So how do we get these two processes to work hand-in-hand, creating an anabolic environment for muscle growth, while at the same time forcing the body to use fat stores to help meet energy demands?

Note: diet plays a HUGE role here as well.  The focus of this section, though, is exercise protocol selection.

1. Stimulate muscle growth with compound exercises, performed for 6-20 repetitions to failure (if strength/hypertrophy is sought), or for max work or power output (if MetCon biased).

The repetition range, together with the execution tempo, will determine the nature of muscle fiber recruitment. We want to recruit, tax and fully exhaust as many fibers as possible, including slow twitch, intermediate, and fast-twitch fibers. As with all strength exercises, slow twitch fibers are recruited first, then as the muscles fatigue, intermediate and finally fast twitch fibers are recruited if and only if the set is continued until fatigue sets in.

Muscle growth is best achieved when the exercises are performed with controlled eccentric movements and continuous tension. Make an effort to minimize momentum unless the nature of the exercise dictates otherwise.

2. Improve insulin sensitivity by performing a sufficient volume of work.

Multiple (2 or 3) sets performed within the 6-20 repetition range is best for depleting muscle glycogen (and stimulating protein synthesis). During HIIRT training, muscle glycogen is broken down at a rapid rate, which results in improved muscle insulin sensitivity and increased LPL (lipoprotein lipase) activity on muscle tissue, causing nutrients to be preferentially partitioned towards muscle tissue.  Insulin sensitivity increases on muscle cells when glycogen stores are low. When this occurs, nutrients are partitioned into the muscle tissue and fat stores are broken down.

3. Increases in testosterone.

4. Maximize GH production with short rest interval HIIRT circuits.

GH is most effectively released performing strength circuits where both upper and lower body muscles are fully taxed, and keeping rest intervals short.

HIIRT leads to a significant drop in blood pH (via the rapid breakdown of glycogen and subsequent release of hydrogen ions), which in turn triggers increased production in GH.

An interesting aside: contrary to popular belief, it’s not lactic acid that causes muscle burn; this is actually the result of lowered blood pH creating an acidic environment, thereby resulting in that old, familiar, muscle burn and fatigue. The brain senses the situation and increases output of GH.

We know that testosterone is important for recovery, shedding fat and building muscle — but what’s so great about growth hormone?

Plenty.  GH has been shown to stimulate fat breakdown (lipolysis), increase the utilization of fat, and decrease the use of carbohydrate as fuel.  GH has beneficial effects on muscle mass, bone density, body fat, and it can help reverse some of the age-related changes in lean body mass (sarcopenea).

GH has also been shown to act as a suppressive on myostatin.  And myostatin, you may remember, inhibits muscle growth and is a negative regulator of muscle tissue. Higher GH release means lower myostatin expression; lower myostatin can result in increased anabolic activity and an increase in androgen receptor expression.

Research shows that circuit strength training (and high intensity sprint training) are both effective methods for naturally elevating GH secretion in healthy adults.  It is my opinion that these effects can be greatly enhanced by adding a resistance exercise element — HIIRT — to the mix.

*Also*: please check out my post ARXFit, and the Perfect Rep.  Because all of this methodology is less-than-effective unless the basic building blocks are solidified.  And yes, ARXFit for sure enables a perfect repetition, but the lessons learned here can for sure be applied to conventional exercise methods.

Heal thyself, hone thyself, change the world – Keith

This content was originally published here.

from https://makingthebest.com/hit-hiit-or-hiirt-theory-to-practice/

[fangirl-with-a-shoulder-fettish]

HIT, HIIT…or HIIRT? – Theory To Practice

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe 

The ARXFit Alpha providing this particular session’s HIIRT train caboose.  Huh…

Curious as to what the differences are between HIT, HIIT and HIIRT?  Well, what follows are what I consider to be the high points.  Tomes could be written on the similarities between these methodologies, but I think the following gives a pretty good overview.

First, a couple of definitions:

HIT – High Intensity Training: The area covered by the overarching umbrella of classic High Intensity Training (HIT) is wide indeed, including such broad-stroke methodologies as classic, single-set-to-failure HIT, and various super-slow routines.  Included too, are all manner of TUL (time under load), repetition tempo, and rest period manipulations. Methodologies here are largely those popularized by Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and bodybuilding’s Mike Mentzer.

Note: for info on “training to failure” see this post.

HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training: Most studies on classic High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) focus on only sprint (running) and/or cycle sprint sessions, because that’s what’s available and most easily studied in a lab setting.  A good article summarizing HIIT, and its positive effects, here.

HIIRT – High Intensity Interval Resistance Training: At it’s most basic, HIIRT is a powerful burst of output (typically 20 – 80 seconds), followed by a scaled rest period.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Think HIIT Tabata sprints — but with heavy resistance exercises.  Brief, brutal and basic are key words here.  I’ve fused elements of CrossFit, and the work of folks such as Scott Abel, Istavan Javorek,  and Joel Jamieson (in addition to whole slew of others) — along with my own, 35+ years-in-the-trenches experience — to create my own methodology.  Hints of HIT?  You know it.  Shades of HIIT?  Yeah, that too.  I come from a background of slinging iron as a way of bettering performance on the track and on the gridiron.  I came of age in an atmosphere that knew no S&C dogma — if it worked, it worked, and that’s all that ultimately mattered.  And that’s the credo I operate by today.

HIT, HIIT, or HIIRT — what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, the distinction lay in the overall intent of each individual “set” (or output burst).  HIT attempts to attain total muscular failure (within an allotted time window) in the targeted musculature, whereas HIIT and HIIRT attempt to attain as many repetitions (or highest cumulative work or power output) as possible within a set, or established time period.  With HIT, each exercise is generally performed once through, to failure.  In HIIT or HIIRT, an exercise may be performed 2, 3 or even many more times within a workout.  I say “generally” here because there is much overlapping and gray area within these methodologies.  HIIT is definitely a conditioning-biased protocol — i.e., Metabolic Conditioning, or MetCon, for short — whereas we can consider HIIRT a hybrid of both HIT and HIIT.  And a HIIRT session may be, depending upon how it is set up, strength, hypertrophy, or MetCon (strength endurance) biased. Confused? Don’t be; this will all make sense soon enough.

Can you give an example?

Sure.   Here’s an example of what I consider to be a classic HIIRT workout: six distinct exercises, 3 upper body dominant exercises alternated with 3 lower body dominant, all set in a circuit format.  Each exercise is performed all-out, full-bore (as many reps or the most force and/or power developed as possible) for 1 full minute.  Then, rest for 1 full minute before beginning the next exercise in succession.  Wash, rinse and repeat.  Each exercise will be performed twice during the 2-round duration of the workout.  If you’re doing the math, we’ve got 24 minutes worth of work and rest here.  Even allowing for some degree of spillover, we can still get this workout done in 30 minutes.  Brief, brutal, basic…and extremely effective.  Consider this scenario:

(A1) Tbar swings (A2) Powermax 360 push-pull/cross-punch (30 secs each exercise, shift on the fly) (A3) ARXFit leg press (A4) ARXFit flat press (A5) Reverse lunge iso hold with dumbbell curls (30 secs each leg, shift on the fly) (A6) Blast strap rows

The actual exercises are not so important at this juncture; what is important is the overall workout setup.  I could crank the intensity up a notch here by reducing the rest period between each exercise to say 45 or even 30 seconds, by bumping-up the work period, or by increasing the exercise resistance.  By virtue of me using resistance exercises here I’ve just morphed a classic HIIT setup (which could have used sprints, hops, jumps, bodyweight exercises, etc.) into a resistance-based interval circuit, or HIIRT, with, in this example, a decidedly MetCon (metabolic conditioning) bias.

So achieving total muscular failure is not a goal of a HIIRT session?

Not necessarily.  Remember when I said that there are no hard lines of distinction between these various protocols?  Consider the following, more strength/hypertrophy-biased (as opposed to the previous example’s MetCon-biased), upper body emphasis HIIRT workout:

(A1) OmniFit pec flye x 5 hyper reps (A2) Leverage machine flat press (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (A3) Bent over row 20X0, 7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

(B1) Hip press with bands, (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (B2) Russian leg curls 30X0,  7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

Notice the very HIT-like feel of the flat press and hip press execution.

*note: the (for example) 30X0 annotation denotes the exercise repetition tempo in the eccentric, pause, concentric, pause format.  30X0 would, therefore, be performed with a 3 second negative, followed by no pause leading into a fast-as-possible concentric, with an immediate return to the subsequent negative.  Note, too, that there is a profound difference between “exploding” into the concentric portion of a movement, and “jerking” into the motion.  There is a time and place for ballistic, “jerking” movements for sure — just not with this protocol.

Two rounds of each can certainly be accomplished in 30 minutes if the rest period between exercises is held sufficiently brief (i.e., less than 1 minute). Extending the rest period will require eliminating the pre-exhaust exercise (in this case, the OmniFit flye), which is fine, considering that if a client is not yet up to the fast-paced nature of the workout to begin with, they probably aren’t in need of a pre-exhaust anyway.

So what are the advantages of HIIRT vs other forms of training?

Well, what we’ve done at Efficient Exercise is essentially turn what would be considered a huge disadvantage (a 30-minute session time constraint) into a decided advantage for the client.  Not only do Efficient Exercise clients need only invest an hour or so per week in the studio to achieve an optimum level of health, but that investment pays huge dividends when it comes to effective fat loss and muscle gain.

How does HIIRT maximize fat loss?

Well, there are many ways and associated reasons, but here are the main points to consider:

The bottom line? In order to maximize fat loss, we must elevate growth hormone secretion, minimize insulin spikes, improve muscle insulin sensitivity, and keep cortisol under control.  This is best achieved by keeping training sessions brief, brutal, basic and intermittent.

The other side of the coin is, of course, muscle gain.  To induce muscle growth we must stimulate protein synthesis in muscle tissue.  Protein synthesis is initiated by an exercise/movement that most effectively:

And the take-home message is this: Recruit and fatigue as many muscle fibers as possible, as fast as possible, and ensure adequate post-workout recovery and nutrition following the workouts.  Remember, exercise ought to be considered a high-amplitude signal that subsequently affects the body’s on-going, anabolic hormonal milieu.  Too much is too much; too little is too little.  Profound, I know — and yet it is so very true.

So how do we get these two processes to work hand-in-hand, creating an anabolic environment for muscle growth, while at the same time forcing the body to use fat stores to help meet energy demands?

Note: diet plays a HUGE role here as well.  The focus of this section, though, is exercise protocol selection.

1. Stimulate muscle growth with compound exercises, performed for 6-20 repetitions to failure (if strength/hypertrophy is sought), or for max work or power output (if MetCon biased).

The repetition range, together with the execution tempo, will determine the nature of muscle fiber recruitment. We want to recruit, tax and fully exhaust as many fibers as possible, including slow twitch, intermediate, and fast-twitch fibers. As with all strength exercises, slow twitch fibers are recruited first, then as the muscles fatigue, intermediate and finally fast twitch fibers are recruited if and only if the set is continued until fatigue sets in.

Muscle growth is best achieved when the exercises are performed with controlled eccentric movements and continuous tension. Make an effort to minimize momentum unless the nature of the exercise dictates otherwise.

2. Improve insulin sensitivity by performing a sufficient volume of work.

Multiple (2 or 3) sets performed within the 6-20 repetition range is best for depleting muscle glycogen (and stimulating protein synthesis). During HIIRT training, muscle glycogen is broken down at a rapid rate, which results in improved muscle insulin sensitivity and increased LPL (lipoprotein lipase) activity on muscle tissue, causing nutrients to be preferentially partitioned towards muscle tissue.  Insulin sensitivity increases on muscle cells when glycogen stores are low. When this occurs, nutrients are partitioned into the muscle tissue and fat stores are broken down.

3. Increases in testosterone.

4. Maximize GH production with short rest interval HIIRT circuits.

GH is most effectively released performing strength circuits where both upper and lower body muscles are fully taxed, and keeping rest intervals short.

HIIRT leads to a significant drop in blood pH (via the rapid breakdown of glycogen and subsequent release of hydrogen ions), which in turn triggers increased production in GH.

An interesting aside: contrary to popular belief, it’s not lactic acid that causes muscle burn; this is actually the result of lowered blood pH creating an acidic environment, thereby resulting in that old, familiar, muscle burn and fatigue. The brain senses the situation and increases output of GH.

We know that testosterone is important for recovery, shedding fat and building muscle — but what’s so great about growth hormone?

Plenty.  GH has been shown to stimulate fat breakdown (lipolysis), increase the utilization of fat, and decrease the use of carbohydrate as fuel.  GH has beneficial effects on muscle mass, bone density, body fat, and it can help reverse some of the age-related changes in lean body mass (sarcopenea).

GH has also been shown to act as a suppressive on myostatin.  And myostatin, you may remember, inhibits muscle growth and is a negative regulator of muscle tissue. Higher GH release means lower myostatin expression; lower myostatin can result in increased anabolic activity and an increase in androgen receptor expression.

Research shows that circuit strength training (and high intensity sprint training) are both effective methods for naturally elevating GH secretion in healthy adults.  It is my opinion that these effects can be greatly enhanced by adding a resistance exercise element — HIIRT — to the mix.

*Also*: please check out my post ARXFit, and the Perfect Rep.  Because all of this methodology is less-than-effective unless the basic building blocks are solidified.  And yes, ARXFit for sure enables a perfect repetition, but the lessons learned here can for sure be applied to conventional exercise methods.

Heal thyself, hone thyself, change the world – Keith

This content was originally published here.

from https://makingthebest.com/hit-hiit-or-hiirt-theory-to-practice/

[professorsudowoodo]

HIT, HIIT…or HIIRT? – Theory To Practice

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe 

The ARXFit Alpha providing this particular session’s HIIRT train caboose.  Huh…

Curious as to what the differences are between HIT, HIIT and HIIRT?  Well, what follows are what I consider to be the high points.  Tomes could be written on the similarities between these methodologies, but I think the following gives a pretty good overview.

First, a couple of definitions:

HIT – High Intensity Training: The area covered by the overarching umbrella of classic High Intensity Training (HIT) is wide indeed, including such broad-stroke methodologies as classic, single-set-to-failure HIT, and various super-slow routines.  Included too, are all manner of TUL (time under load), repetition tempo, and rest period manipulations. Methodologies here are largely those popularized by Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and bodybuilding’s Mike Mentzer.

Note: for info on “training to failure” see this post.

HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training: Most studies on classic High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) focus on only sprint (running) and/or cycle sprint sessions, because that’s what’s available and most easily studied in a lab setting.  A good article summarizing HIIT, and its positive effects, here.

HIIRT – High Intensity Interval Resistance Training: At it’s most basic, HIIRT is a powerful burst of output (typically 20 – 80 seconds), followed by a scaled rest period.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Think HIIT Tabata sprints — but with heavy resistance exercises.  Brief, brutal and basic are key words here.  I’ve fused elements of CrossFit, and the work of folks such as Scott Abel, Istavan Javorek,  and Joel Jamieson (in addition to whole slew of others) — along with my own, 35+ years-in-the-trenches experience — to create my own methodology.  Hints of HIT?  You know it.  Shades of HIIT?  Yeah, that too.  I come from a background of slinging iron as a way of bettering performance on the track and on the gridiron.  I came of age in an atmosphere that knew no S&C dogma — if it worked, it worked, and that’s all that ultimately mattered.  And that’s the credo I operate by today.

HIT, HIIT, or HIIRT — what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, the distinction lay in the overall intent of each individual “set” (or output burst).  HIT attempts to attain total muscular failure (within an allotted time window) in the targeted musculature, whereas HIIT and HIIRT attempt to attain as many repetitions (or highest cumulative work or power output) as possible within a set, or established time period.  With HIT, each exercise is generally performed once through, to failure.  In HIIT or HIIRT, an exercise may be performed 2, 3 or even many more times within a workout.  I say “generally” here because there is much overlapping and gray area within these methodologies.  HIIT is definitely a conditioning-biased protocol — i.e., Metabolic Conditioning, or MetCon, for short — whereas we can consider HIIRT a hybrid of both HIT and HIIT.  And a HIIRT session may be, depending upon how it is set up, strength, hypertrophy, or MetCon (strength endurance) biased. Confused? Don’t be; this will all make sense soon enough.

Can you give an example?

Sure.   Here’s an example of what I consider to be a classic HIIRT workout: six distinct exercises, 3 upper body dominant exercises alternated with 3 lower body dominant, all set in a circuit format.  Each exercise is performed all-out, full-bore (as many reps or the most force and/or power developed as possible) for 1 full minute.  Then, rest for 1 full minute before beginning the next exercise in succession.  Wash, rinse and repeat.  Each exercise will be performed twice during the 2-round duration of the workout.  If you’re doing the math, we’ve got 24 minutes worth of work and rest here.  Even allowing for some degree of spillover, we can still get this workout done in 30 minutes.  Brief, brutal, basic…and extremely effective.  Consider this scenario:

(A1) Tbar swings (A2) Powermax 360 push-pull/cross-punch (30 secs each exercise, shift on the fly) (A3) ARXFit leg press (A4) ARXFit flat press (A5) Reverse lunge iso hold with dumbbell curls (30 secs each leg, shift on the fly) (A6) Blast strap rows

The actual exercises are not so important at this juncture; what is important is the overall workout setup.  I could crank the intensity up a notch here by reducing the rest period between each exercise to say 45 or even 30 seconds, by bumping-up the work period, or by increasing the exercise resistance.  By virtue of me using resistance exercises here I’ve just morphed a classic HIIT setup (which could have used sprints, hops, jumps, bodyweight exercises, etc.) into a resistance-based interval circuit, or HIIRT, with, in this example, a decidedly MetCon (metabolic conditioning) bias.

So achieving total muscular failure is not a goal of a HIIRT session?

Not necessarily.  Remember when I said that there are no hard lines of distinction between these various protocols?  Consider the following, more strength/hypertrophy-biased (as opposed to the previous example’s MetCon-biased), upper body emphasis HIIRT workout:

(A1) OmniFit pec flye x 5 hyper reps (A2) Leverage machine flat press (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (A3) Bent over row 20X0, 7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

(B1) Hip press with bands, (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (B2) Russian leg curls 30X0,  7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

Notice the very HIT-like feel of the flat press and hip press execution.

*note: the (for example) 30X0 annotation denotes the exercise repetition tempo in the eccentric, pause, concentric, pause format.  30X0 would, therefore, be performed with a 3 second negative, followed by no pause leading into a fast-as-possible concentric, with an immediate return to the subsequent negative.  Note, too, that there is a profound difference between “exploding” into the concentric portion of a movement, and “jerking” into the motion.  There is a time and place for ballistic, “jerking” movements for sure — just not with this protocol.

Two rounds of each can certainly be accomplished in 30 minutes if the rest period between exercises is held sufficiently brief (i.e., less than 1 minute). Extending the rest period will require eliminating the pre-exhaust exercise (in this case, the OmniFit flye), which is fine, considering that if a client is not yet up to the fast-paced nature of the workout to begin with, they probably aren’t in need of a pre-exhaust anyway.

So what are the advantages of HIIRT vs other forms of training?

Well, what we’ve done at Efficient Exercise is essentially turn what would be considered a huge disadvantage (a 30-minute session time constraint) into a decided advantage for the client.  Not only do Efficient Exercise clients need only invest an hour or so per week in the studio to achieve an optimum level of health, but that investment pays huge dividends when it comes to effective fat loss and muscle gain.

How does HIIRT maximize fat loss?

Well, there are many ways and associated reasons, but here are the main points to consider:

The bottom line? In order to maximize fat loss, we must elevate growth hormone secretion, minimize insulin spikes, improve muscle insulin sensitivity, and keep cortisol under control.  This is best achieved by keeping training sessions brief, brutal, basic and intermittent.

The other side of the coin is, of course, muscle gain.  To induce muscle growth we must stimulate protein synthesis in muscle tissue.  Protein synthesis is initiated by an exercise/movement that most effectively:

And the take-home message is this: Recruit and fatigue as many muscle fibers as possible, as fast as possible, and ensure adequate post-workout recovery and nutrition following the workouts.  Remember, exercise ought to be considered a high-amplitude signal that subsequently affects the body’s on-going, anabolic hormonal milieu.  Too much is too much; too little is too little.  Profound, I know — and yet it is so very true.

So how do we get these two processes to work hand-in-hand, creating an anabolic environment for muscle growth, while at the same time forcing the body to use fat stores to help meet energy demands?

Note: diet plays a HUGE role here as well.  The focus of this section, though, is exercise protocol selection.

1. Stimulate muscle growth with compound exercises, performed for 6-20 repetitions to failure (if strength/hypertrophy is sought), or for max work or power output (if MetCon biased).

The repetition range, together with the execution tempo, will determine the nature of muscle fiber recruitment. We want to recruit, tax and fully exhaust as many fibers as possible, including slow twitch, intermediate, and fast-twitch fibers. As with all strength exercises, slow twitch fibers are recruited first, then as the muscles fatigue, intermediate and finally fast twitch fibers are recruited if and only if the set is continued until fatigue sets in.

Muscle growth is best achieved when the exercises are performed with controlled eccentric movements and continuous tension. Make an effort to minimize momentum unless the nature of the exercise dictates otherwise.

2. Improve insulin sensitivity by performing a sufficient volume of work.

Multiple (2 or 3) sets performed within the 6-20 repetition range is best for depleting muscle glycogen (and stimulating protein synthesis). During HIIRT training, muscle glycogen is broken down at a rapid rate, which results in improved muscle insulin sensitivity and increased LPL (lipoprotein lipase) activity on muscle tissue, causing nutrients to be preferentially partitioned towards muscle tissue.  Insulin sensitivity increases on muscle cells when glycogen stores are low. When this occurs, nutrients are partitioned into the muscle tissue and fat stores are broken down.

3. Increases in testosterone.

4. Maximize GH production with short rest interval HIIRT circuits.

GH is most effectively released performing strength circuits where both upper and lower body muscles are fully taxed, and keeping rest intervals short.

HIIRT leads to a significant drop in blood pH (via the rapid breakdown of glycogen and subsequent release of hydrogen ions), which in turn triggers increased production in GH.

An interesting aside: contrary to popular belief, it’s not lactic acid that causes muscle burn; this is actually the result of lowered blood pH creating an acidic environment, thereby resulting in that old, familiar, muscle burn and fatigue. The brain senses the situation and increases output of GH.

We know that testosterone is important for recovery, shedding fat and building muscle — but what’s so great about growth hormone?

Plenty.  GH has been shown to stimulate fat breakdown (lipolysis), increase the utilization of fat, and decrease the use of carbohydrate as fuel.  GH has beneficial effects on muscle mass, bone density, body fat, and it can help reverse some of the age-related changes in lean body mass (sarcopenea).

GH has also been shown to act as a suppressive on myostatin.  And myostatin, you may remember, inhibits muscle growth and is a negative regulator of muscle tissue. Higher GH release means lower myostatin expression; lower myostatin can result in increased anabolic activity and an increase in androgen receptor expression.

Research shows that circuit strength training (and high intensity sprint training) are both effective methods for naturally elevating GH secretion in healthy adults.  It is my opinion that these effects can be greatly enhanced by adding a resistance exercise element — HIIRT — to the mix.

*Also*: please check out my post ARXFit, and the Perfect Rep.  Because all of this methodology is less-than-effective unless the basic building blocks are solidified.  And yes, ARXFit for sure enables a perfect repetition, but the lessons learned here can for sure be applied to conventional exercise methods.

Heal thyself, hone thyself, change the world – Keith

This content was originally published here.

from https://makingthebest.com/hit-hiit-or-hiirt-theory-to-practice/

[danda202]

HIT, HIIT…or HIIRT? – Theory To Practice

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe 

The ARXFit Alpha providing this particular session’s HIIRT train caboose.  Huh…

Curious as to what the differences are between HIT, HIIT and HIIRT?  Well, what follows are what I consider to be the high points.  Tomes could be written on the similarities between these methodologies, but I think the following gives a pretty good overview.

First, a couple of definitions:

HIT – High Intensity Training: The area covered by the overarching umbrella of classic High Intensity Training (HIT) is wide indeed, including such broad-stroke methodologies as classic, single-set-to-failure HIT, and various super-slow routines.  Included too, are all manner of TUL (time under load), repetition tempo, and rest period manipulations. Methodologies here are largely those popularized by Arthur Jones (of Nautilus fame) and bodybuilding’s Mike Mentzer.

Note: for info on “training to failure” see this post.

HIIT – High Intensity Interval Training: Most studies on classic High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) focus on only sprint (running) and/or cycle sprint sessions, because that’s what’s available and most easily studied in a lab setting.  A good article summarizing HIIT, and its positive effects, here.

HIIRT – High Intensity Interval Resistance Training: At it’s most basic, HIIRT is a powerful burst of output (typically 20 – 80 seconds), followed by a scaled rest period.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Think HIIT Tabata sprints — but with heavy resistance exercises.  Brief, brutal and basic are key words here.  I’ve fused elements of CrossFit, and the work of folks such as Scott Abel, Istavan Javorek,  and Joel Jamieson (in addition to whole slew of others) — along with my own, 35+ years-in-the-trenches experience — to create my own methodology.  Hints of HIT?  You know it.  Shades of HIIT?  Yeah, that too.  I come from a background of slinging iron as a way of bettering performance on the track and on the gridiron.  I came of age in an atmosphere that knew no S&C dogma — if it worked, it worked, and that’s all that ultimately mattered.  And that’s the credo I operate by today.

HIT, HIIT, or HIIRT — what’s the difference?

Generally speaking, the distinction lay in the overall intent of each individual “set” (or output burst).  HIT attempts to attain total muscular failure (within an allotted time window) in the targeted musculature, whereas HIIT and HIIRT attempt to attain as many repetitions (or highest cumulative work or power output) as possible within a set, or established time period.  With HIT, each exercise is generally performed once through, to failure.  In HIIT or HIIRT, an exercise may be performed 2, 3 or even many more times within a workout.  I say “generally” here because there is much overlapping and gray area within these methodologies.  HIIT is definitely a conditioning-biased protocol — i.e., Metabolic Conditioning, or MetCon, for short — whereas we can consider HIIRT a hybrid of both HIT and HIIT.  And a HIIRT session may be, depending upon how it is set up, strength, hypertrophy, or MetCon (strength endurance) biased. Confused? Don’t be; this will all make sense soon enough.

Can you give an example?

Sure.   Here’s an example of what I consider to be a classic HIIRT workout: six distinct exercises, 3 upper body dominant exercises alternated with 3 lower body dominant, all set in a circuit format.  Each exercise is performed all-out, full-bore (as many reps or the most force and/or power developed as possible) for 1 full minute.  Then, rest for 1 full minute before beginning the next exercise in succession.  Wash, rinse and repeat.  Each exercise will be performed twice during the 2-round duration of the workout.  If you’re doing the math, we’ve got 24 minutes worth of work and rest here.  Even allowing for some degree of spillover, we can still get this workout done in 30 minutes.  Brief, brutal, basic…and extremely effective.  Consider this scenario:

(A1) Tbar swings (A2) Powermax 360 push-pull/cross-punch (30 secs each exercise, shift on the fly) (A3) ARXFit leg press (A4) ARXFit flat press (A5) Reverse lunge iso hold with dumbbell curls (30 secs each leg, shift on the fly) (A6) Blast strap rows

The actual exercises are not so important at this juncture; what is important is the overall workout setup.  I could crank the intensity up a notch here by reducing the rest period between each exercise to say 45 or even 30 seconds, by bumping-up the work period, or by increasing the exercise resistance.  By virtue of me using resistance exercises here I’ve just morphed a classic HIIT setup (which could have used sprints, hops, jumps, bodyweight exercises, etc.) into a resistance-based interval circuit, or HIIRT, with, in this example, a decidedly MetCon (metabolic conditioning) bias.

So achieving total muscular failure is not a goal of a HIIRT session?

Not necessarily.  Remember when I said that there are no hard lines of distinction between these various protocols?  Consider the following, more strength/hypertrophy-biased (as opposed to the previous example’s MetCon-biased), upper body emphasis HIIRT workout:

(A1) OmniFit pec flye x 5 hyper reps (A2) Leverage machine flat press (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (A3) Bent over row 20X0, 7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

(B1) Hip press with bands, (negative emphasis, to failure), 50X0 (B2) Russian leg curls 30X0,  7 reps short pause, 7 more reps

Notice the very HIT-like feel of the flat press and hip press execution.

*note: the (for example) 30X0 annotation denotes the exercise repetition tempo in the eccentric, pause, concentric, pause format.  30X0 would, therefore, be performed with a 3 second negative, followed by no pause leading into a fast-as-possible concentric, with an immediate return to the subsequent negative.  Note, too, that there is a profound difference between “exploding” into the concentric portion of a movement, and “jerking” into the motion.  There is a time and place for ballistic, “jerking” movements for sure — just not with this protocol.

Two rounds of each can certainly be accomplished in 30 minutes if the rest period between exercises is held sufficiently brief (i.e., less than 1 minute). Extending the rest period will require eliminating the pre-exhaust exercise (in this case, the OmniFit flye), which is fine, considering that if a client is not yet up to the fast-paced nature of the workout to begin with, they probably aren’t in need of a pre-exhaust anyway.

So what are the advantages of HIIRT vs other forms of training?

Well, what we’ve done at Efficient Exercise is essentially turn what would be considered a huge disadvantage (a 30-minute session time constraint) into a decided advantage for the client.  Not only do Efficient Exercise clients need only invest an hour or so per week in the studio to achieve an optimum level of health, but that investment pays huge dividends when it comes to effective fat loss and muscle gain.

How does HIIRT maximize fat loss?

Well, there are many ways and associated reasons, but here are the main points to consider:

The bottom line? In order to maximize fat loss, we must elevate growth hormone secretion, minimize insulin spikes, improve muscle insulin sensitivity, and keep cortisol under control.  This is best achieved by keeping training sessions brief, brutal, basic and intermittent.

The other side of the coin is, of course, muscle gain.  To induce muscle growth we must stimulate protein synthesis in muscle tissue.  Protein synthesis is initiated by an exercise/movement that most effectively:

And the take-home message is this: Recruit and fatigue as many muscle fibers as possible, as fast as possible, and ensure adequate post-workout recovery and nutrition following the workouts.  Remember, exercise ought to be considered a high-amplitude signal that subsequently affects the body’s on-going, anabolic hormonal milieu.  Too much is too much; too little is too little.  Profound, I know — and yet it is so very true.

So how do we get these two processes to work hand-in-hand, creating an anabolic environment for muscle growth, while at the same time forcing the body to use fat stores to help meet energy demands?

Note: diet plays a HUGE role here as well.  The focus of this section, though, is exercise protocol selection.

1. Stimulate muscle growth with compound exercises, performed for 6-20 repetitions to failure (if strength/hypertrophy is sought), or for max work or power output (if MetCon biased).

The repetition range, together with the execution tempo, will determine the nature of muscle fiber recruitment. We want to recruit, tax and fully exhaust as many fibers as possible, including slow twitch, intermediate, and fast-twitch fibers. As with all strength exercises, slow twitch fibers are recruited first, then as the muscles fatigue, intermediate and finally fast twitch fibers are recruited if and only if the set is continued until fatigue sets in.

Muscle growth is best achieved when the exercises are performed with controlled eccentric movements and continuous tension. Make an effort to minimize momentum unless the nature of the exercise dictates otherwise.

2. Improve insulin sensitivity by performing a sufficient volume of work.

Multiple (2 or 3) sets performed within the 6-20 repetition range is best for depleting muscle glycogen (and stimulating protein synthesis). During HIIRT training, muscle glycogen is broken down at a rapid rate, which results in improved muscle insulin sensitivity and increased LPL (lipoprotein lipase) activity on muscle tissue, causing nutrients to be preferentially partitioned towards muscle tissue.  Insulin sensitivity increases on muscle cells when glycogen stores are low. When this occurs, nutrients are partitioned into the muscle tissue and fat stores are broken down.

3. Increases in testosterone.

4. Maximize GH production with short rest interval HIIRT circuits.

GH is most effectively released performing strength circuits where both upper and lower body muscles are fully taxed, and keeping rest intervals short.

HIIRT leads to a significant drop in blood pH (via the rapid breakdown of glycogen and subsequent release of hydrogen ions), which in turn triggers increased production in GH.

An interesting aside: contrary to popular belief, it’s not lactic acid that causes muscle burn; this is actually the result of lowered blood pH creating an acidic environment, thereby resulting in that old, familiar, muscle burn and fatigue. The brain senses the situation and increases output of GH.

We know that testosterone is important for recovery, shedding fat and building muscle — but what’s so great about growth hormone?

Plenty.  GH has been shown to stimulate fat breakdown (lipolysis), increase the utilization of fat, and decrease the use of carbohydrate as fuel.  GH has beneficial effects on muscle mass, bone density, body fat, and it can help reverse some of the age-related changes in lean body mass (sarcopenea).

GH has also been shown to act as a suppressive on myostatin.  And myostatin, you may remember, inhibits muscle growth and is a negative regulator of muscle tissue. Higher GH release means lower myostatin expression; lower myostatin can result in increased anabolic activity and an increase in androgen receptor expression.

Research shows that circuit strength training (and high intensity sprint training) are both effective methods for naturally elevating GH secretion in healthy adults.  It is my opinion that these effects can be greatly enhanced by adding a resistance exercise element — HIIRT — to the mix.

*Also*: please check out my post ARXFit, and the Perfect Rep.  Because all of this methodology is less-than-effective unless the basic building blocks are solidified.  And yes, ARXFit for sure enables a perfect repetition, but the lessons learned here can for sure be applied to conventional exercise methods.

Heal thyself, hone thyself, change the world – Keith

This content was originally published here.

from https://makingthebest.com/hit-hiit-or-hiirt-theory-to-practice/