Abstract
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a time-efficient training method suggested to improve health and fitness for the clinical population, healthy subjects, and athletes. Many parameters can impact the difficulty of HIIT sessions. This study aims to highlight and explain, through logical deductions, some limitations of the Skiba and Coggan models, widely used to prescribe HIIT sessions in cycling. We simulated 6198 different HIIT training sessions leading to exhaustion, according to the Skiba and Coggan-Modified (modification of the Coggan model with the introduction of an exhaustion criterion) models, for three fictitious athlete profiles (Time-Trialist, All-Rounder, Sprinter). The simulation revealed impossible sessions (i.e., requiring athletes to surpass their maximal power output over the exercise interval duration), characterized by a few short exercise intervals, performed in the severe and extreme intensity domains, alternating with long recovery bouts. The fraction of impossible sessions depends on the athlete profile and ranges between 4.4 and 22.9% for the Skiba model and 0.6 and 3.2% for the Coggan-Modified model. For practitioners using these HIIT models, this study highlights the importance of understanding these models’ inherent limitations and mathematical assumptions to draw adequate conclusions from their use to prescribe HIIT sessions.
Highlights
Interval training, often referred to as high-intensity interval training (HIIT), is a training method where, in a single session, exercise bouts performed at high intensity are interspersed with periods of active or passive recovery, both lasting from a few seconds to a few minutes [1,2]
By examining the simulated High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) sessions, we encountered impossible sessions, i.e., sessions for which the work intensity derived from the theoretical model (Skiba or CogganModified) would require the athlete to surpass, on every effort interval, his maximal power output over the work interval duration
Other HIIT sessions amongst the7onofes16 simulated are likely impossible to realize, even though they do not imply per se that the athlete must surpass his best performance at every repetition
Summary
Often referred to as high-intensity interval training (HIIT), is a training method where, in a single session, exercise bouts performed at high intensity are interspersed with periods of active or passive recovery, both lasting from a few seconds to a few minutes [1,2]. HIIT is widely used in many sports [6], the prescription of HIIT sessions involves several parameters such as the number of sets and repetitions per set, the duration and intensity of the high-intensity and recovery intervals, etc. The two-parameter critical power model was adapted to intermittent exercise and improved through various iterations [9,12,13,14,15]. The Skiba model [14,15], widely referred to in the scientific literature, and the Coggan model [16], commonly used in the field, by millions of users, in part through commercial apps such as TrainingPeaks
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