You had to know it was heading south from here lol
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She also busts me balls when sheās been working out for 12 weeks with no results. Iām calling it - I like this approach:
Your knees are better than mine - I canāt accelerate / decelerate that often that quickly any more.
Iāve become the default S&C coach for our rugby team. Its full of fat old boys mainly. A few youngens. But mainly fat old boys.
I normally keep our running to about an 85% effort (about 115% MAS I would suppose) for 80m with a 20m acceleration / deceleration zones at either end, so 100m total.
I appreciate what you are saying here - but there are a few other considerations.
To me MAS and 100% VO2 max are āalmostā interchangeable. Your MAS should be about 100%VO2 max.
Like your 1RM your MAS will vary day to day. On one day I can post great dead lift numbers (for me) - the next, crap numbers. Hounding someone to hit 125% of their MAS on a day where thatās 101% of their RPE is not going to work.
Studies have shown that objective measure of HIIT decreases results. There are a few but this is the one I found on T nation.
Whilst this is good for measure - Iāve much more interested in what the person looks like during the interval. You can tell when people are not giving their all. MAS is an objective measure of this. But using RPE is about trust. If you trust yourself / person & people you are training then it should be okay. I can have an honest conversation with the rugby boys a out their effort levels.
MAS (IMHO) is only useful in a more professional setting / when you get lazy people that need to be chased. With a stick.
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It goes a LONG way. I helped my wife train for Murph that way, and the results were awesome. She had total trust in me too, which helped. She legit had no idea how much she was lifting on any day: Iād just load it up, tell her to squat, evaluate how the set went and change from there. She told me what movements she liked and which ones she didnāt and we built it from around there.
The big thing for ME was to be at peace with someone getting āgood enoughā results.
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Martin Gibala talks about this in his One Minute Workout book (catchy and misleading title for a book thatās dense with research into HIIT and sprint training, from one of the OG researchers of the movement). And I agree absolutely, speaking only for myself (n=1). My commitment is perennially āI will do what I can,ā and that often, maybe usually, changes for the better as soon as Iām warmed up. Iāve recently taken an almost 3 month break and am back to (my) basics. Two weeks in, Iām already turning different sprint scenarios over in my head as I lie in bed, though my grudging agreement with myself when I started back was that I would just take it easy.
My family calls me competitive, and Iām often startled by that. I donāt feel competitive. I feel cooperative. The only exceptions are games (I come to win! who doesnāt?) and the things Iām doing alone that have measurable and highly desired outcomes; so work, where money and referrals indicate that Iām at the top of my local game because Iāve worked to put myself there, and the little room upstairs, where my treadmill, rower, and weights are. I see that as competing with myself, though, so not traditionally ācompetitive.ā
But my family may be right. Because if āI come to winā at games, fitness, and work success, what else is there to compete about?
Ohā¦on that noteā¦confession: I read very quickly and noticed in school that I finish tests before most people (most being pretty much everyone, elementary through grad school) without any loss of quality. Itās a point of previously unspoken pride. I wish I were tested more often! 
@carlbm Iām guessing your wife isnāt competitive, which accounts for her satisfaction with less than full effort. If so, I would count yourself a lucky man, because competition can be stressful in a marriage. If everyone comes to win, people have to lose.
(āI come to winā comes from Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans.)
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Totally. MAS %s will only really work if your athletes gut themselves on their fitness tests.
FWIW, I wasnāt trying to say MAS is the ābestā way to measure HIIT, but so far itās the one that I like the most. To me, it can help make the athletes who typically under-work pick up the pace, and the ones who might overwork dial it back a little. I also appreciate how it can be easier to measure fatigue.
Agreed, theyāre close, but certainly not perfect. I suppose to me itās just a semantic issue saying theyāre the same thing, since we canāt measure VO2 without gas exchange, but we can estimate it.
Very true. You canāt ever afford to be too rigid in prescriptions.
Interesting, Iāll have to look these up. Having read that article though, I donāt think itās fair to say that self-regulated HIIT yielded better results. The prescribed intensity (80% max power) was too easy for the participants, compared to the autoregulated session. Of course, to a degree, if you can get people to work harder they get better results. That said, training doesnāt take place in a vacuum and with the increased exertion (higher RPE and VO2 achieved) there is also increased fatigue.
On top of that, this study didnāt really look at outcomes and improvements after training with auto regulated or prescribed intensities, so based off this study we donāt know if one or the other is better, just that people who auto-regulate work harder than those working at 80% peak power for 60 seconds.
The way I see it (again, this is just my opinion), being able to objectively define intensities ranges seems to be a better way to measure progress and manage fatigue from training than RPE-based conditioning.
I suppose the question at the end of the day is: ādo you need people to give it their all?ā I honestly think that the answer is a no, particularly if weāre talking about S+C for athletes. They have so much on their plate that if i can get the same or similar results without digging them into a hole, thatās bound to be the best option.
Saying that, Iād only use MAS on people with more performance oriented goals (like the high school athletes I work with), since they tend to have many different training stressors to juggle. For gen-pop, I would 100% get them to autoregulate their HIIT, since they almost certainly donāt train enough anyway and a lot of them want to feel sweaty and tired after a session.
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So who is really training whoā¦
I confess when it comes to my wifeā¦ I will only help if asked. Had to learn this as well. I might suggest a program or 2 but beyond thatā¦nope. But I never skimp on the compliments. Keep those coming. I am for sure trained and Iām not complaining.
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Dude, marriage is learning something new every single day, haha.
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I think the leg press is the single most underrated exercise. Iād an accept an argument that all-out sprinting is a contender for the same title
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Iād argue itās sprinting only because itās significantly less used than the leg press.
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Microwaving meal #3 at 0900 today: a chicken and apple sausage, half a chik-fil-a chicken patty (left over from the kiddo), 3 peppers and 4 mushrooms, all cut up and mixed in 0 sugar BBQ sauce.
Obese co-worker rolls into the breakroom, sees me pull it out of the microwave and goes āEating that kind of stuff this early in the morning?ā
āIāve been up since 0300. Itās just food: f**k offā
I confess Iām a real people person.
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No matter at which hour I wake up, my breakfast is some shit like that and people treat me with the same bewilderment, obese or not ahah
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Obviously the only appropriate thing to eat at that time of day is 6 āservingsā of sugary breakfast cereal in one bowl. Or pancakes.
Wait, Macdonalds still do breakfast, right?
I like proper food for breakfast and breakfast-y type things for post-workout. Tomorrow I have pancakes, bananas, and cottage cheese or quark as my planned post-workout meal and Iām much excited. This morning I made a salmon bowl for breakfast, ārulesā be damned.
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His follow up line was āThis time of day, I just want my cerealā.
Shocker, haha.
@Voxel Yup. People get so hung up on ābreakfast foodsā ādinner foodsā, etc. Just stupid. Itās food. Put it in your facehole.
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My go to in the morning is eggs and cottage cheese.
What is āquarkā? I am assuming itās not the sub-atomic physics particle.
basically cottage cheese, but with yogurt texture
How much protein in sub atomic particles 
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I think Iād have to go with about 90% effort sprinting as the most underrated leg exercise, at least for my situation. Going balls out I tend to lose all coordination. But damn do sprints make leg work feel better about 2 days later.