I’m beginning to wonder if I’m the only person on earth who has actually tried the Sugar Cane Workout, as I’ve read and heard about everywhere. Andrew Huberman The podcast has made him internet famous, there are numerous blogs promoting the protocol, and if you scroll through any fitness TikTok, you’ll inevitably come across a video of Huberman promoting it. Norwegian 4×4 or 12-3-30Not many people actually said that. end The Sugarcane Workout just didn’t interest me in any way, let alone being able to enjoy it or see results, so I had to try it for myself.
What is the Sugarcane (or Sugarcane) Workout?
The SugarCane workout is a series of intervals described by Andy Galpin (Huberman’s podcast). Galpin said he learned the workout from trainer Kenny Kane, and Huberman calls it the SugarCane (Sugar Cane?) workout. Check out the clip of Galpin explaining his training here.
Sugarcane training is sometimes called HIIT training or VO2max training, but Galpin doesn’t use either term. teeth However, interval training involves performing short segments at high intensity with rest periods in between.
Galpin says the intervals can be any length, but only provides examples of two-minute intervals. This workout doesn’t appear to be available anywhere else, so we’re relying on this short interview clip. Here’s what Galpin says in the podcast:
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Round 1Run (or bike, boat, etc.) as far as you can in 2 minutes. Record the distance you run.
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2 minute break
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Round 2: Run (or bike, pedal, etc.) for the same amount of time distance Same as round 1. Expect it to take a little longer than round 1.
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2 minute break
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Round 3: Run (or bike, pedal, etc.) for the same amount of time time Similar to round 2. Aim to beat your original distance from round 1.
So if you run 400 meters (one lap around the track) in the first round, it might take you 2 minutes and 5 seconds to run the same distance in the second round, then in the third round you should run 2 minutes and 5 seconds, aiming to run 401 meters or more.
Results of my trial
I decided to do this on foot, on a flat gravel road. Pretty easy right? A nice evening of interval running. But I ran into a few problems.
There’s no easy way to program it in an app or on the watch.
The first problem was that there was no easy way to program a workout on your phone or watch. The Garmin Connect app lets you create intervals that are time-based or distance-based, so the first two-minute round is easy. But you can’t program the second interval as distance-based because you don’t know the distance in advance, and you can’t program the third interval as time-based because you don’t know the time in advance.
This might be an easier workout with a 1980s-style watch, but whatever you do, you’ll need to keep an eye on the time. and As you run, time the distance of each interval, for example by pressing the lap button on your watch and recording exactly which tree you’re running into. I doubt there are that many brain cells left at the end of a hard workout, but I bet someone has done it.
Anyway, I programmed it into my Garmin. I set the first interval to 2 minutes, each recovery to 2 minutes, and the other two work intervals to “until lap button is pressed.” I also created a data screen that allows me to view the previous lap time and distance next to the current lap time and distance. Good to go! Let’s get started!
It’s a big deal in three very similar intervals.
I did this workout on a punching bag and realized there was a very good chance I wasn’t getting the stimulation I was hoping for. Galpin says “if you slack off, the next round will be harder,” but apparently that’s not the case. More on this later. I decided not to slack off. I decided to do my best to run each interval at near-maximal effort. Here are my splits:
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Round 1, 2 minutes: 0.27 miles
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Round 2, 0.27 miles: 2:06 min
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Round 3, 2:06: …I’m not sure exactly. I tried to stop the clock at 2:06, but it actually stopped at 2:07. Still, I made my 0.27 mile goal. About 434 meters.
In terms of pace, I’d give myself an A+. For comparison, Galpin gives the example that if you run 400 meters in the first round, you might be able to run that same 400 meters in 2:05 or 2:10, but in the third round you’re aiming for 405 or 410. My watch doesn’t distinguish between 5- or 10-meter increments, so I did the best I could under the circumstances.
Please, do it at normal intervals.
I completed this training, What was the point?? I got roughly the same stimulation as a traditional runner would get doing time- or distance-based interval training at a target pace and target heart rate.
For example, I could tell myself, “3×400 @ interval pace,” where “interval pace” means a pace that feels hard for that distance, but allows me to complete all the intervals in roughly the same time. Not only do runners do this all the time (no need to reinvent the wheel), but I could also run a 3×400 at interval pace, which is a good pace for me. Such a vdot calculator It tells me exactly what my target pace should be. I entered my recent race times and the calculator gave me a target of 2:04 for my 400m intervals, which is roughly the same as my average pace for my three Sugarcane intervals. Why? that?
Another way to do intervals is to make them time-based: go all out for 2 minutes, recover for 2 minutes, and repeat. If you’re using a running watch, you can choose your target pace here as well. For me, my 2-minute interval pace will be roughly the same as my 400-meter pace. It’s a little different for faster or slower runners, but you can do the math to determine your target, or you can determine it by effort value or heart rate. My heart rate for these intervals was roughly 85% of max, so I think that gives you an idea of what your target is.
This regular approach also allows you to practice pacing: instead of trying too hard and going out at a “max effort” on the first interval, only to fail (and be significantly slower on subsequent intervals), you run the first interval knowing that you’ll have to run that same pace three, four, or seven more times with two-minute rests.
How do I proceed with the Sugarcane Workout?
Here’s where things get confusing: In the interview, after the Sugar Cane workout is described and named, Huberman asks Galpin how he would progress with the workout he was talking about. Galpin explains that he would add more work and/or extra rounds, but his answer is pretty clear: do not have It can also be applied to the Sugarcane workout: he talks about published studies (as far as I can see, the Sugarcane workout has not been formally studied) and he talks about using a 2:1 rest to work ratio (the Sugarcane workout described uses a 1:1 ratio).
The Sugarcane Workout is described as a one-off, fun game you can play with yourself while working out. It’s also a research-backed workout that you should only do a certain number of times per week (e.g. Norwegian 4×4There’s no progression plan built in, and it seems to fall apart pretty easily if you don’t push yourself each round.
On the other hand, if you do regular runner’s intervals (400m, 600m, or 2-minute intervals), you can easily progress by adding a round each time you do a workout, doing around eight at a time. At that point, you might want to switch to a different workout (say, 800m instead of 400m, hill repeats instead of track intervals) depending on your training goals.
How often should I do Sugarcane Workouts?
Galpin says nothing. Huberman suggests doing this workout once every two to four weeks because it’s intense, but that doesn’t make much sense: even if you go all out the first time, doing three two-minute intervals won’t take weeks to recover.
In a more traditional running or cardio program, you might do these intervals once or twice a week, but you might not do the same workout every time — for example, you might have a hard training day every Wednesday, alternating between track intervals, tempo runs, and hill repeats.
If you really want to do the Sugarcane workout (I did it and I think you should too because misfortune calls friends), you can do it once a week, or, even better, just do it once in your life and then transition to regular intervals after that.
How does Sugarcane Workout ensure you put in the hard work?
That’s the problem. It’s not true. Galpin says that if you slack in any round, the next round will be harder, but I don’t think that’s the case. Try If you run as hard as you can every time, you’re not slacking. For example, after running 400 meters in round one, in round two you only need to walk 400 meters, which will probably take five minutes. In round three, you can walk just a little faster and run 401 meters in five minutes. That means instead of three hard intervals, you’ll do one hard interval and two easy walks.
Again, interval running helps: if you force yourself to do three two-minute rounds of “run as hard as you can while still having enough energy left to run again,” all of the reward rules of sandbagging go away.
What I like least about this workout is that it assumes you need to gamify it to motivate yourself, but the rules of the game are that you don’t have to motivate yourself. The only thing keeping you honest is your desire to run three hard intervals. If that’s the case, then run three hard intervals.
