The Art of Intensity

To force dramatic change within yourself, you must go to war.

The biochemical changes that result in fitness improvements (muscular size, strength, endurance, speed, power, etc.) are brought about most efficiently and effectively, by a high-intensity stimulus.

People who engage in highly repetitive tasks for long durations show little improvement in their physical adaptations when compared to those who engage in similar tasks at much higher intensities for a much shorter duration of time.

Low-intensity tasks do not stimulate the body enough to elicit impressive levels of physical development. This is true for strength and size, as well as endurance, speed, and power.

The most important requirement for stimulation of the increase in muscular size and strength is high-intensity muscular contraction. Similarly, the most important requirement for stimulation of the increase in size and strength of the heart, for the purpose of improving endurance, is high-intensity running, at a heart rate relatively close to the individual’s maximum heart rate (90-95%).

One must understand that intensity and duration are inversely related to one another.

That is, you can train long but not hard, or you can train hard but not long.

So, to bring about the maximal level of physical development, in the shortest amount of time, one must increase their training intensity while lowering their training duration.

Energy & Survival

The body has finite reserves of energy. This energy is primarily allocated to certain functions, most of those functions are concerning survival and homeostasis (maintaining a balanced, living state).

When viewing training from a stress-response lens, it becomes easy to understand that only relatively small quantities of energy can be allocated towards the body’s ability to perform exercise, the rest is dedicated towards survival.

After receiving a proper dosage of a high-intensity stimulus, the body will respond in order to protect itself from future attacks on its energy reserves by improving its ability to handle stressful stimuli, through the build-up of certain physiological adaptations (muscular size, strength, endurance, speed, power, etc.)

High-intensity exercise is the only form of exercise that is sufficiently potent enough to reliably stimulate a compensatory response from the body, in a short amount of time. Thus, performing easy, repetitive tasks will not be enough to stimulate any noticeable change in physical ability. Easy repetitive tasks are what we consider to be leisure activities (walking, jogging, bike riding, hiking, etc.).

While there is certainly a place for leisure activities in The 2-Hour Athlete approach, do not confuse leisure activities with training, as that is precisely where most people go wrong.

Essentially, when training, one should aim to perform each set of exercises, whether running or lifting, etc., to a point where you are forced to utilize nearly 100% of your ability. Intensity is the most important factor in increasing your physical fitness. The more potent the stimulus, the more dramatic the response.

Spend less time in the gym

You must make your workouts harder and shorter.

There are basically 3 ways to increase the level of intensity in your workouts:

• Increase the weight you lift/speed you run/difficulty of the exercise.

• Increase the repetitions/intervals/laps/rounds performed at a given difficulty, within a set time frame.

• Decrease the duration of time required to perform a certain amount of work.

To expect fitness improvements, one must employ the principle of progressive overload.

You must increase the difficulty of each successive training session, by implementing at least one of the 3 principles above. This will force your body to continually adapt to higher levels of physical stress, and improve your physical development over time. Stagnation is the enemy.

Understand that the only difference between those who have an extremely well-developed physique with high levels of fitness, and those who are of average or below-average physical development and fitness, is their body’s ability to cope with high levels of physical stress.

As a note of caution: You must first develop a base level of general fitness as a beginner, to truly engage in proper high-intensity training. If you are an untrained person, your body likely does not know how to tap into its energy systems to produce maximal effort. This is a skill that is learned over time by intentionally training at high intensities.

When properly executed, the average weight training session should last no more than 30 to 45 minutes. The average running session should last no more than roughly 20-30 minutes. Again, this is within the context of this training system, which is intended to yield maximum results in minimal amounts of time.

There is a very definitive point where you will recognize your ability to perform exercise at the required intensity drops off a cliff. This is when your training session is complete.

As you improve in your ability to train at high intensities, the duration of your training sessions should naturally decrease to a certain point. Again, the more intensely you train, the shorter your sessions should become.‌                                                  

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