High Intensity Doesn't Mean High Speed

For years, I thought I knew what a good yoga practice looked like.

Mine took me about 1-1.5 hours long. Ideally, I practised six days a week.

I followed the Ashtanga sequence, worked my way through the postures, and measured my practice by how much of the series I had completed.

Longer practice? Good.

Did more poses that day? Good.

More days a week? Even better.

I wasn't necessarily asking myself whether my body was actually getting stronger or moving better.

I was asking myself:

"Did I finish my practice?"

Looking back, I realise I was very good at "doing" yoga.

But I wasn't necessarily very good at training my body for real-life adaptation - like getting out of breath just from climbing a flight of stairs.

The shift from doing poses to understanding my body

My relationship with yoga started to change when I started collecting injuries like as if they were Pokemon cards - wrist sprains, shoulder issues, and back pain, and trading pain stories with fellow seasoned practitioners like it's normal.

This made me look at movement very differently.

Instead of simply asking, "Can I do this pose?", I started asking:

Why can't I do this pose?

What muscles are supposed to be working?

Which ones aren't?

Do I actually have the mobility required?

Do I have the strength to control the position?

Am I compensating somewhere else because the muscles that should be doing the work aren't doing their job?

I began to realise that sometimes spending another 30 minutes repeating a pose wasn’t actually going to change anything.

If a movement felt stuck, it wasn’t always a matter of doing more of it - it was a matter of understanding why it felt stuck.

Sometimes what I needed was to build strength in a specific area.

Sometimes I needed to improve mobility where I was restricted.

Sometimes I needed to add resistance so the right muscles were actually being challenged.

Sometimes I needed to slow the movement down enough to notice what was really happening.

And sometimes…

I needed to stop repeating the same thing altogether and train it in a completely different way.

That's when I learned that "hard" doesn't have to mean "fast"

When people hear high intensity training, they often picture frantic movement.

Jumping.

Running.

Burpees.

Sweating profusely.

Moving as quickly as humanly possible.

But high intensity doesn't necessarily mean high speed.

In fact, some of the hardest drills I do are ridiculously slow.

I'll take a movement and deliberately slow it down.

No momentum.

No rushing.

No bouncing through the easy bits.

Just me asking the working muscle to produce and control force throughout the movement.

And suddenly, an exercise that looks almost embarrassingly simple becomes very uncomfortable.

That's because intensity isn't about how fast you're moving. It's about how much you're asking your muscles to do.

You can increase intensity by adding a weight.

You can use a resistance band.

You can change the leverage.

You can increase the range of motion.

You can progress to a harder variation.

Or you can slow things down and make the muscle work harder for every part of the movement.

Sometimes, the most intense thing you can do is...

slow down.

ASAP: As Slow As Possible

One of the things I sometimes use in my training is what I jokingly call *ASAP - As Slow As Possible. (*not to be mistaken as "As Soon As Possible")

It's not about making every exercise slow.

Slow isn't automatically better either.

It's about using tempo deliberately.

Take a squat.

You could do twenty quick squats, using momentum and bouncing through the movement.

Or you could take five seconds to lower yourself, control the bottom position, and stand back up with intention.

You might do fewer repetitions.

But your muscles may be working considerably harder.

And that's the part that interests me.

I'm less interested in how many repetitions you can collect and more interested in whether the muscles that are supposed to be working are actually doing the work.

Less is more - but only when the "less" is done properly

This is one of the ideas that really resonated with me when I read Body by Science by Doug McGuff and John Little.

The basic premise is that you don't necessarily need enormous amounts of exercise to stimulate your body to adapt.

You need an effective stimulus.

That distinction is important.

Because "less is more" doesn't mean:

"Do less and don't try very hard."

It means:

Do less, but make what you do count.

That's a very different philosophy.

And honestly, it makes a lot more sense to me now that I'm a busy adult with approximately 847 things competing for my attention.

I don't want to spend two hours training just so I can say I trained for two hours.

I want to know:

Did this session make me stronger?

Did it improve something?

Did I challenge my body enough to give it a reason to adapt?

If the answer is yes, then perhaps I don't need another hour.

So what's happening when your muscles start burning?

Here's where high intensity training gets really interesting.

Your muscles aren't made up of just one type of fibre. Broadly speaking, we talk about Type I and Type II muscle fibres.

Type I fibres are more endurance-oriented.

Type II fibres are capable of producing more force and are recruited as the demands on your muscles increase.

Your body doesn't simply switch every Type II fibre on because you've declared your workout "high intensity."

Instead, as the force requirement increases and your working muscles fatigue, your nervous system progressively recruits additional motor units to help you continue producing force.

This is one reason training close to muscular fatigue can be an effective way to stimulate muscle adaptation, including hypertrophy.

And this is also why resistance matters more than drama.

A movement doesn't need to look explosive to be demanding.

Your muscles don't care whether the exercise looks impressive on Instagram.

They care about the force they have to produce.

A static hold like this keeps the lats under tension for longer, forces you to stay connected to the muscle doing the work, and recruits more muscle as fatigue kicks in. Simple looking drill. Very rude little burn.

Why I give you a little rest

You'll notice that my classes aren't designed as one continuous 30-minute suffer-fest.

We'll work.

Then we'll rest for 30 seconds or a minute.

Then we'll work again.

That rest is intentional.

When your muscles become fatigued, their ability to produce force changes. A short recovery gives you enough time to come back and create another quality effort instead of simply accumulating more and more tired repetitions.

And I don't want you to confuse being exhausted with having trained effectively.

Those aren't necessarily the same thing.

The goal isn't to make you so tired that you can't move.

The goal is to fatigue the muscles enough to create a meaningful training stimulus while still being able to perform the movement with reasonable control.

That's a very different kind of hard.

Why I became less interested in endless repetition

This is also where my approach differs from the way I used to practise yoga.

Traditional yoga can involve a lot of repetition and a lot of time spent moving through a sequence.

And there is absolutely value in that.

I'm not here to tell you that a 60- or 90-minute yoga practice is bad.

If you love your long practice, keep doing it.

But I no longer subscribe to the belief that more time automatically equals more benefit.

If I'm doing the same movement over and over again long after my muscles are fatigued, I have to ask myself:

What am I actually training now?

Is the quality of my movement still good?

Are the right muscles still doing the work?

Am I still present in terms of my focus?

Am I improving something?

Or am I simply accumulating more repetitions because that's what I've always done?

That's an uncomfortable question.

But it's an important one.

Because sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop.

This is where the Day1Yoga method really clicked for me

The Day1Yoga method taught me to look beyond the pose.

A handstand, for example, isn't just a handstand.

It's strong and stable shoulders.

It's the ability to produce force through your arms.

It's trunk control.

It's hip positioning.

It's mobility.

It's coordination.

It's the ability to put all those pieces together.

So rather than simply practising the final shape over and over again, we can train the components.

We can strengthen the muscles that need strengthening.

We can improve the mobility that needs improving.

We can progressively overload the body.

We can practise the skill.

And eventually, the handstand becomes the proof that the training has worked.

The handstand isn't the entire point.

It's the receipt.

And this is why I love combining yoga with strength and high intensity training.

I still love the shapes/poses.

I still love the practice.

But now I understand more about what's happening underneath those shapes.

And this is why my classes are only 30 minutes

I know what it's like to have very little time.

And I know how easy it is to tell yourself:

"I don't have an hour, so I'll just do it tomorrow."

Then tomorrow becomes next week.

Then next week becomes next month.

And suddenly you're wondering why you don't feel as strong or energetic as you want to.

I don't want exercise to feel like another enormous commitment you have to squeeze into your life.

I want it to be something you can realistically do.

That's why my classes are 30 minutes.

Not because 30 minutes is some magical amount of time or that 3 happens to be my favorite number.

Not because everyone only needs 30 minutes of exercise.

But because 30 purposeful minutes can create a meaningful training stimulus.

In those 30 minutes, we can warm up, work hard, build strength, train mobility, practise a skill, get your heart rate up and finish with some stretching.

Then you're done.

You can get on with your day.

High intensity can be quiet

I've come to realise that high intensity doesn't have to look dramatic.

It can look like holding a position while your muscles shake.

It can look like a resistance band around your legs.

It can look like picking up a heavier weight.

It can look like taking five seconds to lower yourself instead of one.

It can look like six slow, controlled repetitions instead of twenty rushed ones.

It can look like working hard for 30 seconds, resting, and then doing it again.

It can even look like standing still and trying to get one particular muscle to finally do the job it was supposed to be doing all along.

High intensity is not about moving fast.

It's about creating enough demand that your body has a reason to adapt.

And that's the shift I want to share with you.

I used to think a good yoga practice was one that lasted 1.5 hours.

Now, I'd rather spend 30 minutes doing something purposeful than 90 minutes simply because I think I'm supposed to.

Because the goal isn't to spend more time exercising.

The goal is to get more from the finite time you have. Because let's face it, we all have expiration date.

And if there's one thing I hope you take away from my approach, it's this:

You don't need more exercise.

You need better exercise.

Less time.

More intention.

More strength.

More purpose.

And hopefully, this gives you more time left in your day to live your actual life.

xx,

Lydd