The Fitness Influencer Survival Guide–Separating Hype from Reality

How to Actually Train...

We are inundated with information like never before. One of the most important skills to develop in the 21st century is the ability to distinguish hype from reality.

That’s why I rely on a three-legged stool that includes research (1), history (2), and practice (3). The latter two are particularly important in the case of fitness, which we’ll use here to demonstrate the three-legged stool in action.

Someone recently messaged us in response to a social media post on exercise:

“This space is so frustrating for a layperson. Rhonda Patrick says the complete opposite. How can these people reach completely different conclusions?”

We receive these notes often. You could sub out Rhonda Patrick and sub in a number of strength coaches, nutritionist, productivity expert, life coach, or mindfulness teacher, and the same remains true. From social media to podcasts, there are endless tips and tricks on how to live and perform better. Much of it comes from people with large followings, on major podcasts, or perhaps even with fancy credentials. Even if you are knowledgeable and check the backgrounds of the folks dispensing the advice, things can get confusing quickly. It’s hard to know whom to listen to.

I wanted to do what I do best: combine science, history, and real-world practice to get at what has been proven to work in the case of fitness.

If nothing else, hopefully, this guide helps you sort through the noise in fitness and demonstrates an approach to information overload.

Without further ado, your Fitness Influencer Survival Guide:

When an influencer says “sprint”…

Ignore it, unless it’s for a bout of exercise that takes less than ~8 seconds and has a long recovery. Usually what the influencer means when they say “sprint” is run hard, or about a pace you could sustain for a mile. You can only truly sprint for a handful of seconds, then fatigue starts slowing you down. You don’t want to go all out, trying to sprint far longer than you can, only to be jogging by the end of the workout. It’s a waste of a stimulus and a huge injury risk.

When an influencer says go “all out”…

Unless we’re talking about a race or PR attempt, ignore it.

What they really should be saying is to strive for your best average over the workout, while still leaving one or two reps in the tank.

For example, if the workout is 4 x 5-minute repeats, the goal should be to keep every one of those repeats within a percent or two of each other. A dramatic slowdown is not good. The goal is to put in the greatest possible amount of high-quality effort over an entire workout. By definition, if you go “all-out” on one repetition, the rest will suffer.

When an influencer says HIIT…

What they mean is doing something hard, repetitively. There is wide variation in interval training, and the specifics matter. HIIT (high-intensity interval training) is just a catch-all phrase that means everything from 200m repeats at an 800m pace to 3k repeats at a slower than 10k pace and everything in between. It’s a fancy phrase for “hard workout.” What kind of hard workouts or intervals you do depends on your goals.

Do you want to go a bit faster to work on speed, or longer and slower to work on endurance, or some mixture in between? The point is there is no one specific type of HIIT that is best. You respond to the stimulus you train. There are many ways to train hard.

When an influencer says sprint interval training (SIT)…

They mean a hard and fast workout, but not actual sprinting.

In track coach speak, we’d call this work “speed endurance.” Something like 4x150m at 400m pace with a couple minutes rest between intervals. These are hard and demanding workouts that aren’t quite sprinting, but make you feel the burn of fatigue. The key to these workouts is they should be low volume with lots of rest in between repetitions. Doing them too often comes with a price.

When an influencer says Tabata sprints are great…

Tabata workouts are the Pert Plus of intervals: mediocre at two things. They are very hard with very short rest, which means they aren’t really a speed or anaerobic workout because the short recovery prevents recovery of our anaerobic system and makes the workout more aerobic. But, they are too fast and fatiguing to provide much of an aerobic stimulus.

How could we do them better?

First, the original, 170% Vo2max effort is too intense for most people. What happens is you get started and then by the last repetition completely fall apart. If you need a short and fast workout, try 8 to 10 x 30 seconds at a pace you could sustain for 4-6 minutes with 60 seconds of recovery between each interval. As you adapt, decrease the rest or increase the reps.

If you need a good aerobic or endurance workout that doesn’t take much time, do a short progression run or erg. Take 20-25 minutes, use the first 5 minutes as a warm-up, and then go a bit faster or harder every few minutes. The goal is to finish under control, comfortably uncomfortable, where you can say just a few sentences.

When an influencer says the “Norwegian 4×4 protocol” is the best for raising Vo2max…

It’s not. This claim takes a single study that compared a few intervals and found that 4 x 4 minutes worked better. However, ​research​ by Stephen Seiler found 4x8min works better than 4×4, and another series of ​studies​ by Veronique Billat found 30 seconds on/off for as long as you can sustain without slowing down significantly is better than 3-minute reps.

Guess what? None of that matters. Research tends to fall short when studying workouts. Why? It’s artificial. It takes people and makes them do the same workout 2-3x a week for 6-8 weeks. No one does that in the real world. It’s not generalizable.

So what? There is no single best workout. That’s the exact conclusion esteemed exercise science researcher Stephen Seiler came to when he told us the search for the magical workout is a misguided approach.

If you care about VO2max, your best bet is to mix it up:

• Short and fast (10x200m w/ 200m jog @ a pace you could sustain for 5 to 10 minutes)

• Medium: 6×800 @ a pace you could sustain for 10 to 20 minutes) w/ 2min rest

• Longer and a bit slower: 4x2k @ at a pace you could sustain for ~45 minutes w/ 2min rest

• Tempo/Threshold: 2x10min at a pace you could sustain for an hour.

• And lots of easy slow movement

One of the reasons this holds true is because the contributing factors to performance, or even a parameter like VO2max, are vast. Even for something specific like mitochondria creation, we have half a dozen pathways that all lead to an increase in mitochondria, and each pathway requires a different stimulus.

Repeating the same workout week in and week out is what we did in the 1950s. But modern evidence (and common sense) says varying it up is a better path to sustaining progress.

When an influencer says Vo2max is the best indicator for health and longevity…

What they really mean is aerobic performance!

That’s right, ​nearly all the research on longevity​ uses performance, not actual VO2max.

These studies either use the speed you reach at the end of a treadmill test, what your heart rate is during a standardized sub-max test, or some other performance metric.

In other words: You are better off seeing what you can run in a mile or 5k (or equivalent test in rowing, cycling, or swimming) than a Vo2max test.

Why?

Because performance encompasses more health and fitness than just VO2 max, which is generally centrally limited. In contrast, a 5k time trial gives you a decent idea of both peripheral and central contributors to aerobic performance. What does this mean? It means stop trying to improve VO2 max (it levels off much earlier than performance). If you care about health and want a decent indicator, just try and get a bit faster over 5k or aim at improving within your standard hard workout. If your times improve and it feels a bit easier, guess what? You’re getting fitter. It’s usually just that simple.

When an influencer says zone 2 is the best...

They really mean easy or slow running. There is​ no magic in Zone 2​.

All the training zones are just markers to help classify training. You do not enter a distinct zone where the adaptation is completely different. It’s a rough guess to say most of the work in this range of effort helps to elicit a particular adaptation. But that’s it.

The reason elite runners spend a lot of time in zones 1, 2, and 3 is that they need to accumulate a lot of volume in easy to moderate paces to get long-term aerobic adaptations. Life isn’t going to end if you do some of those runs in Zone 1 or venture into Zone 3 on a typical run. Former 2:03 marathoner Moses “Big Engine” Mosop spent 52% of his training in a “recovery” zone, which would equate to zone 1. Eliud Kipchoge sometimes starts his easy runs at paces that the weekend warrior down the street could sustain.

It gets back to the importance of varying your exertion levels. It’s why you’ll see elite runners do some runs at a 7-minute pace, and then other days they’re feeling good and clicking off sub 6 for a standard day. So when it comes to zone 2, just think about accumulating volume at a pace you can sustain for a while.

Keep in mind that If all you do is zone 2, you’re missing out on stimulus for important adaptations. It’s best to target a wide range of exertion levels.

When an influencer says resistance training is better than aerobic training, or vice versa…

They are trying to create a false dichotomy to capture your attention. Here’s what we know:

People who train regularly (resistance, aerobic, or some combination), don’t smoke, maintain ​reasonable levels of body fatness​ (under 30 percent for women, under 22 percent for men), and are generally active tend to live long and functional lives. Some of these people are lifelong marathoners who barely do any formal strength training. Some of these people are gym rats whose sole “aerobic” training is walking. The point is that if you are regularly active and mind your energy balance (calories in/calories out), then you are 99 percent of the way there. And if you struggle with weight (like so many of us do, given our terrible food environment) there are more tools at your disposal than ever before.

It’s easy to get lost in the complexity and nuance of everything, but at the end of the day, if you are moving your body consistently, avoiding injuries, and maintaining decent body composition, then just keep at it, have fun, and spend your time reading a good book instead of listening to dozens of 3-hour health guru podcasts, each of whom is delivering conflicting information. Truly.

Follow the training poem:

Mostly easy.

Some moderate efforts.

Occasionally hard.

A bit fast and smooth.

Vary it up.

And rarely, ‘Go see God’

Do that for months and years, and you’ll be fine.

Why do fitness influencers get it wrong?

Before we leave you, a final reflection: While some influencers get it wrong because they are grifting for followers, likes, and shares (so the accuracy of the message is less important than what will go viral…), others are genuinely smart folks who are trying to inform. How do they still get it wrong? There’s a common online phenomenon that occurs among the “just trying to inform” group that goes like this:

1. Find a research paper on a topic.

2. Summarize its findings.

3. Simplify it to your audience so it’s actionable.

At first glance, this seems noble. You are translating research to the masses. However, it misses the mark when you don’t have enough experience to understand the practical limitations of the research. For example, you don’t understand that all of these studies on intervals are only 6-8 weeks long. This means you are testing peaking, not what’s best over the long haul. All those studies on novices? They show what every high school coach knows: you can give novices just about anything, even crazy stuff, and they will adapt. It’s the clean slate phenomenon. Everything is a new stimulus.

The history of strength, endurance, and interval training is a kind of natural selection. What works stays, while the crazy ideas that don’t move the needle are abandoned. And that’s precisely what so many online fitness influencers don’t know. If they knew their history, then they’d realize when they suggest doing 5 days a week of intervals, we tried that in the 1940s-50s and it failed. Or when they focus on VO2max reps, they’d realize that was partially what led to the 1990s doldrums of American distance running, where America flat-out sucked. When you know history, you can see where a trend fits, and if it’s been explored before.

I’m not claiming to have all the answers. But I’ve got a lifetime of experience training at a high level, coaching at the elite level, and the academic chops to back it up. In other words, I don’t just read research, I don’t just practice what we preach, I don’t just coach others from a distance. I do our best to do it all.

– Steve