“There are three main physiological targets that you can hit when you do any sort of training session; Aerobic Target, Anaerobic Target and Neuromuscular Target.”

This week on the OA podcast Patrick and Daniel are joined by author, consultant and expert in high intensity training, Dr. Paul Laursen to talk about his work.

An avid sportsman throughout his life, Dr. Laursen describes himself as a “failed athlete” who had taken a deep interest in sports from an early age. He was able to leverage that love of sports into his successful career in medicine and sports science, specialising in High Intensity Training for his PHD.

While in a professor at Edith Cowen University in Perth, Australia, he met and carried out many clinical studies on Interval Training with his long term colleague Martin Buchheit. Following the successful publication of many papers and a large review of their work they co-wrote the very successful ‘Science and Application of High Intensity Interval Training’.

Dr. Laursen outlines some of the reasoning and methods behind his research and explains how he has started to put more of a focus in his work on breathing to see if performance can be improved at high intensity through targeting and conditioning the respiratory muscles.