So I’ve given a pretty serious try with the 30-30-30 metabolic challenge for hypertrophy “we built an athlete over Christmas holidays”
Anyway everything went fine with impressive feel and results until the end of the third week, where I started to struggle with horrible insomnia - usually terminal where I woke up at 3 a.m. after going to bed around 11:30pm.
I strongly suspect it’s overtraining or CNS meltown after consulting a few pros. His book also adverts to the dangers of going too far with the program and NOT going to failure but I think where I’ve messed up was with the RESTING INTERVALS.
Dr Darden instructs us to take 30 seconds between exercises in the first week, eventually reducing it to 15 seconds or less in the fourth week but I went beyond that, taking 2-6 seconds maximum already in the second week just because I could switch exercises that quickly with calisthenics.
After a particular workout, at the Finnishi g exercise ( 7th ) I gasping for air and my heart was very stressed.
At 3am when I woke up I was kind of hot, tingling legs, some involuntary spasms as well.
Could this very short transition between challenging exercises be stressing too much and releasing too much cortisol ?
Metabolic conditioning, as described in the original Arthur Jones’ writings, is nothing more than a misguided description of lactate threshold training. This type of training can increase lactic acid clearance, but for resistance training such is counterproductive to muscle recruitment, as lactic acid production (H+ ions) inhibits muscle recruitment and causes massive fatigue .
Metabolic conditioning never caught on as Arthur Jones envisioned, especially after the now forgotten Total Conditioning at West Point. Runners and athletes long ago learned how to deal with the lactate threshold, and It’s not the infamous rush factor of Nautilus training protocol.
Furthermore, the breakdown of fats is different than the breakdown of glucose in many important details as regards the Kreb’s cycle. While anaerobic work may breakdown glucose and stack pyruvate up for mitochondria clearance, fats use a differing means of breakdown. Thus, aerobic conditioning and beta oxidation of fats is different in manufacturing ATP from lipids. The main constituent of beta oxidation of lipids is oxaloacetate. This is a news nugget that never gets explained on most HiT sites. Metabolic conditioning, and Global Metabolic conditioning are not founded in science.
There’s less painful ways to train your heart. Talk to Marc/ATP, if you have a couple hours to spare. He’ll tell you all about them.
As far as training for hypertrophy, you’d be hard-pressed to find a WORSE WAY to train than what you’re doing. Shorter rest periods have been coming under increasing fire, with actual studies and numbers [in favor of not-short rest periods (I hesitate to say “long”)] to back up what started as nothing more than prejudicial dislike.
Take a week off and then start back without such ridiculous extremes in mind…
P.S. You might want to rework your rather ‘clickbait’-ish title. It implies Doc’s 30-30-30 program is to blame for your CNS shock (if that’s what it is), when you clearly brought it upon yourself.
Lactate threshold training and metabolic conditioning are different approaches.
There are guidelines for each.
Lactate has a number of parameters for heart rate, duration and rest periods.
MC is less precise since it covers various interval and circuit protocols.
I suggest you review and align with the most common guidelines. You probably got it wrong somewhere.
Dardens protocols do not in my opinion align with other methods which at least have a nod towards science, are recommended for general get fit, used by recreational, serious or elite athletes.
I think we all know the answer is a resounding “no”. There were longtime Darden disciples who did everything precisely as written, who wanted it so badly to be true, only to walk away tremendously disappointed and disillusioned.
Who? You can’t just state your own thoughts as facts, when you haven’t even tried the formula yourself. I’m not stuck with the Darden HIT formula only, but for some reason it worked wonders for me (and still do). I’ve found that many different stimulus works, but HIT is the most “bang for the buck” in my 35 years of training experience.
Anything will work for a population of N=1. It is more logical to start with methods that have a record of relatively widespread success.
We can see several examples on this site of people that follow more standard hypertrophy methods to build muscle.
Some also perform separate cardio, which can be low level steady state (brisk walk, bike, xtrainer …). or sprint intervals. Sometimes combined with dynamic strength work such as kettlebells or bodyweight curcuits.
Most importantly they do not overstate the limited, (but not non existent) cardio benefits of short recovery strength work compared with those of dedicated aerobic training.
Nor suffer from severe overnight symptoms of over training.
Are you suffering from severe CNS overload, glycogen depletion, localised muscle trauma or an undiagnosed medical condition. Who knows, and do you really expect an unknown stranger on the Internet to diagnose you ?
I use these methods also/too, but if I’m being critical there is a lot of junk volume involved in many methods, which is why I was attracted to HIT in the first place. Yes, I don’t stick to only one, or a few ideas on how to train. There are a few HIT paradigms though, that I implement in the majority of my training (mainly good form, slow/controlled reps, full body training sessions, emphasized negatives, 60-90 sec set duration, 2-3 training sessions a week etc.).
You might say HIT is more of a training philosophy to me, than a dogmatic program to follow. That said, I must admit that HIT is hard to replicate in flywheel training…
