When you hear how short Ulric Dentfley's workouts are, you might think he's not doing enough. Ulric is the co founder and CEO of Carol, a company that makes AI powered exercise bikes that are designed to make you as fit as possible in as little time as possible. And when they say as little time as possible, they're not joking. Their workouts are less than five minutes long, and somehow, in just five minutes a day a few days a week, Ulric has seen his cardiovascular fitness skyrocket him from the fiftieth percentile for his age to the top five percent. He knows what you're thinking too. It sounds too good to be true, that is, until you hear the science behind it. My name is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the found under a behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. On today's quick Win episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out a quick win that you can apply today. In today's show, I speak with al Rick Dentfley about how he dramatically improved his fitness in just a few minutes a week.

When you hear how short Ulric Dentfley's workouts are, you might think he's not doing enough. Ulric is the co founder and CEO of Carol, a company that makes AI powered exercise bikes that are designed to make you as fit as possible in as little time as possible. And when they say as little time as possible, they're not joking. Their workouts are less than five minutes long, and somehow, in just five minutes a day a few days a week, Ulric has seen his cardiovascular fitness skyrocket him from the fiftieth percentile for his age to the top five percent. He knows what you're thinking too. It sounds too good to be true, that is, until you hear the science behind it. My name is doctor amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the found under a behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. On today's quick Win episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out a quick win that you can apply today. In today's show, I speak with al Rick Dentfley about how he dramatically improved his fitness in just a few minutes a week.

Karen Bike uses REHIT that's reduced exertion high intensity interval training and REHIT is a new and improved form of HIT and it was developed by scientists looking for the shortest, most effective, and most accessible way to exercise, and research has proven that rehit is the fastest way to get fit with only these two twenty second sprints. So you have a very light warm up, a first twenty second sprint, very life recovery second twenty second sprint, and then cool down, also again at very low intensity. And were hit offers high intensity, rehead offers maximum intensity, so you really push to your limits, but only for a very brief moment, and that makes it quite doable. And that very brief moment of pushing to your limit sends a very powerful signal to your body that it must get fitter and stronger. And the analogy that we like to use is that we simulate a fight or flight situation. So in those we HIT sprints, you start the very explosive and the energy demand in your body goes up by a factor of one hundred compared to rest in action of a second. Your body doesn't know what's happening, and so it interprets that as an emergency situation, so where you either have to run for your life or fight for your life. And your aerobic energy system that you would usually use during exercise is not fast enough to provide energy for your muscles, so instead your muscles, so there's actually three energy systems. It first depletes what's called phospho creatine stores. They're very immediate and this is basically energy you can tap in in an instant, but it only lasts for about ten seconds. And then your muscles have to use muscular glycogen, which is a storage form of sugar stored directly in the muscle, and because the energy demand is so sudden and so severe, your muscles mobilize lots of glycogen, and the emphasis here is on mobilize, So they take lots of glycogen out of these muscle stores, about twenty five to thirty percent, and then it actually uses only very very little of that during the sprints because the sprints are so short, so you start very severely and then you only go for twenty seconds, and then you'll recover again with the mobilization of the glycogen. A number of other molecules are released that are bound to the glycogen, and that's AMPK and then another molecule called PGC one alpha, and those molecules are very powerful, very important signaling molecules. PGC one alpha is what's called the master regulator for mitochondrial biogenesis. So those are powerful signaling molecules that tell your body to get fitter and stronger. And it's really just the release of the molecules that trigger the adaptation. And that's I think it's really important to appreciate that nobody gets fitter during a workout, So you don't get fitter and stronger while you're working out. You get fitter and stronger in the recovery between workouts. And so what the workout has to do is has to send a signal, hopefully a powerful signal to your body to for example, build new muscles, so in this case, build more and larger mindol chondria in the recovery period between workouts. And that's exactly what we had achieved with those two maximum intensity sprints.

Karen Bike uses REHIT that's reduced exertion high intensity interval training and REHIT is a new and improved form of HIT and it was developed by scientists looking for the shortest, most effective, and most accessible way to exercise, and research has proven that rehit is the fastest way to get fit with only these two twenty second sprints. So you have a very light warm up, a first twenty second sprint, very life recovery second twenty second sprint, and then cool down, also again at very low intensity. And were hit offers high intensity, rehead offers maximum intensity, so you really push to your limits, but only for a very brief moment, and that makes it quite doable. And that very brief moment of pushing to your limit sends a very powerful signal to your body that it must get fitter and stronger. And the analogy that we like to use is that we simulate a fight or flight situation. So in those we HIT sprints, you start the very explosive and the energy demand in your body goes up by a factor of one hundred compared to rest in action of a second. Your body doesn't know what's happening, and so it interprets that as an emergency situation, so where you either have to run for your life or fight for your life. And your aerobic energy system that you would usually use during exercise is not fast enough to provide energy for your muscles, so instead your muscles, so there's actually three energy systems. It first depletes what's called phospho creatine stores. They're very immediate and this is basically energy you can tap in in an instant, but it only lasts for about ten seconds. And then your muscles have to use muscular glycogen, which is a storage form of sugar stored directly in the muscle, and because the energy demand is so sudden and so severe, your muscles mobilize lots of glycogen, and the emphasis here is on mobilize, So they take lots of glycogen out of these muscle stores, about twenty five to thirty percent, and then it actually uses only very very little of that during the sprints because the sprints are so short, so you start very severely and then you only go for twenty seconds, and then you'll recover again with the mobilization of the glycogen. A number of other molecules are released that are bound to the glycogen, and that's AMPK and then another molecule called PGC one alpha, and those molecules are very powerful, very important signaling molecules. PGC one alpha is what's called the master regulator for mitochondrial biogenesis. So those are powerful signaling molecules that tell your body to get fitter and stronger. And it's really just the release of the molecules that trigger the adaptation. And that's I think it's really important to appreciate that nobody gets fitter during a workout, So you don't get fitter and stronger while you're working out. You get fitter and stronger in the recovery between workouts. And so what the workout has to do is has to send a signal, hopefully a powerful signal to your body to for example, build new muscles, so in this case, build more and larger mindol chondria in the recovery period between workouts. And that's exactly what we had achieved with those two maximum intensity sprints.

I hope you enjoyed this little quick Win episode today. If you would like to listen to the full interview, you can find a link to that in the show notes. If you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot co. Thank you for sharing part of your day with me by listening to How I Work. If you're keen for more tips on how to work better, connect with me via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy to find. Just search for Amantha Imba. How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the Cool and Nation. I am so grateful for being able to work and live on this beautiful land, and I want to pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging. How I Work is produced by Inventium and hosted by me Amantha Imba. And a big thank you to Martin Ima who did the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.

I hope you enjoyed this little quick Win episode today. If you would like to listen to the full interview, you can find a link to that in the show notes. If you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot co. Thank you for sharing part of your day with me by listening to How I Work. If you're keen for more tips on how to work better, connect with me via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy to find. Just search for Amantha Imba. How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the Cool and Nation. I am so grateful for being able to work and live on this beautiful land, and I want to pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging. How I Work is produced by Inventium and hosted by me Amantha Imba. And a big thank you to Martin Ima who did the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.