Early Retirement Extreme Forums

New adaptations are the spice of life when it comes to training as well as a variety of sports/recreation/workouts. Great follow-up Jacob.

@jacob, that could certainly be the case.

Ego wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 25, 2025 12:59 pm

This is a good point and one I've made here previously regarding measuring workouts. Goodhart's Law is certainly a thing. The fact that the twitchy, exhausted feeling is something that I do not normally feel doing regular workouts leads me to - at least partially - believe some of the REHIIT hype. Also, it makes intuitive sense that doing full effort sprints would provoke an improvement that longer-slower work would not. I could do a track (running) workout and maybe produce the same results, but all out 200m sprinting has left me injured in the past. Also, running does not have the heavy-resistance, muscular effort that these cycling sprints require. Again, this could be wishful thinking (placebo) on my part, so we shall see.



Well, HRV nosedived when we returned and has stayed relatively low (62 last night). Sleep duration has been good and I feel like I am sleeping well, but the Garmin continues to say I suck at sleeping. Oh well.

Thanks. I Was hoping the REHIIT would be more helpful so I'd have some reason to believe once I got back on some sort of REHIIT-like protocol in the fall I'd get some improvements. Just like last year, once I changed locations, numbers across the board went down. I get the concern with absolute accuracy of the data, but the measurement technology did not change when I came up to the woods, and the trends have persisted for weeks now, so it's hard not to conclude that the object under measurement (i.e., me) has changed.

I think when it comes to different workout modalities there's more than different ways of using muscles at play. There are different metabolic modes that come into play under different stimulus circumstances, which lead to different adaptations. And I don't think we can really call the placebo effect wishful thinking any more. Physical and mental health are much more entwined than was once believed, and I think having the mind on board rather than resisting change improves results--to the point where even absent the actual exogenous intervention, the brain can open the door to physical improvement, or decline.