[quote]CaliforniaLaw wrote:
andersons wrote: Of course they had muscle. And they lifted weights. But when they ate, and when they trained, they did not worry about preserving muscle. At least I never heard them mention it. They just focused on staying in their weight class, or making weight.
You are talking about intent. Why? [/quote]
Never mind.
Not all sprinters are big. I noticed at this year’s olympics that there were quite a few who had a skinny body type, versus the full, round muscle type.
I have also seen this at the university level, where one of my students who had never competed before joined the track team and won meets at the regional level. He just looked like a really skinny kid.
[quote] The question is: Is “HIIT” better than “steady state”? And if so, why?
Someone said “HIIT” was better. We know it’s better because sprinters are lean.
As a counter-example, I presented wrestlers. I showed that a group of people who do a lot of “steady state” work are also lean and muscular. [/quote]
Your counter-example sucks because wrestlers MOSTLY do high-intensity interval stuff. Short periods of all-out muscular effort, followed by periods of low effort.
Their “steady state” stuff, while it may be steady state, is actually high-intensity, relatively short-duration steady state. A hard 2 mile run is different than a slow 20 mile run. And it is a small part of their overall time training.
And in fact, the highest weight class guys, who tend to be much fatter than the ones who are trying to make weight, are also much slower, and their matches have longer sustained grappling rather than the short bursts. So if anything, this is yet another correlation of leaner physiques with high-intensity bursts of activity.
So your “counter”-example is actually more of an example.
[quote] As I said in regards to the sprinter example: Correlation does not equal causation.
Just because sprinters are lean and muscular does not mean that sprinting made them that way. There could be genetic factors at issue. There could be self-selection issues. People who have the right body types start sprinting. Again, go to a jr. high track practice. You’ll see sprinters’ frames and distances runners’ frames, even though the physiques are undeveloped. You can simply tell the difference right away, at at very young age. [/quote]
Your reasoning here would be fine IF there weren’t any direct evidence about this stuff. Your reasoning would lead to the conclusion that several possibilities for causation exist, therefore nothing is known.
But there IS direct evidence. There ARE many experiments (experiments manipulate a variable and therefore CAN show causation, not just correlation) showing HIIT to be superior for fat loss.
Coupled with the WIDE observation that people who do a lot of high-intensity stuff have leaner, more muscular physiques than people who do a lot of long-duration, low-intensity stuff. (I think long-duration, low-intensity is a better characterization than the more ambiguous “steady state.”)
Furthermore, there is MUCH STRONGER empirical evidence for the effect of adaptation through training than there is for self-selection. Self-selection SOUNDS like it would be true and a very strong factor, but the evidence for it is very weak. For example, countries that have tried to identify children at a very young age who are suited for different types of athletic activity fail to predict future success. You cannot take a child and predict from his body type and muscle fiber makeup his future success in a sport. These predictions are no better than chance.
I have studied LOTS of research on this as part of my former research specialty. The funny thing is, there are lots of people, and it sounds like you are one them, who, no matter how much evidence there is for training adaptation and almost no scientific evidence for genetic factors as a predictor of success in athletics (or any other field of expertise for that matter), just simply won’t believe it.
But the questions you’re posing have already been asked by scientists, and the answer is overwhelming that the effect of adaptation to training explains over 90% of the variance of success in athletics, chess, tennis, golf, and music.
I realize it’s hard to believe genetics plays NO role. HOWEVER, if it does, there OUGHT to be some measurable characteristic that one could use to predict future success. But no one can! You go pick out some kids that based on body type you believe will be good at wrestling, or good at sprinting. Then pick out some kids you think will not be good. Have both groups train for their sports, and you will find that the chance of future success is about the same.
That is what the coaches and scientists in the Asian and Eastern European communist countries found.
And do not misrepresent what I’m saying here. I am NOT saying that genetic differences do not exist. They do. But among those who have achieved a level of success in any field, training accounts for nearly all the variance of achievement. And most importantly, attempts to identify those with physiology best suited for success in an athletic skill have failed.
[quote] I think one can get lean doing “steady state” work and doing “HIIT” work. I’ve never said otherwise.
I will say this: No one has proven which is superior. And using sprinters’ physiques as proof is logically fallacious, so that clearly doesn’t establish proof of anything. [/quote]
You’ve got your own logical fallacies going on here.
For one thing, you cannot prove a universal negative. You cannot say “No one knows, no one has shown” unless you have read EVERY study and observed EVERY observation and found it not to exist.
Sure, you can get lean doing “steady state” work. No one said you couldn’t. So you are also mischaracterizing the opponent view (straw man fallacy).
However, just because one can get lean doing “steady state” doesn’t mean HIIT couldn’t be superior (by, say, achieving the same in less time). This is another general flaw in your reasoning.
Based on the evidence I’ve seen, this is what I think:
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it is rare to see a lean, muscular person who does NOT do some form of high-intensity or explosive training, keeping in mind that weight lifting itself is high-intensity
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in fact, lean, muscular people tend to do a LOT of high-intensity training
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people who do a lot of long-duration, low-intensity training, like distance running, and little to no high-intensity training, tend to not be as lean or as muscular as those who do the opposite
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experimental data also suggest that HIIT is superior for fat loss, compared to steady state cardio in the “fat burning zone”
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since weight lifting is high-intensity, a lot of weight lifting limits the amount of HIIT, such as sprints, one can do because of recovery issues. This is why a bodybuilders would obviously choose low-intensity cardio to shed fat, not necessarily because it is superior to HIIT, but because it better fits the rest into the rest of the training/recovery program.
I don’t see the need for all the controversy. IF a person is going to do ONLY cardio, like the many people who go to the gym and hop on the treadmill, they’d likely be better off doing HIIT than lower-intensity, steady-state stuff, at least in terms of results per minute. However, if other high-intensity stuff like weight training is a priority, low-intensity cardio may be the fat-loss tool that best fits the overall program. Also, low-intensity is probably a more appropriate tool for people who are extremely overweight, have major joint issues, or who have been very sedentary for a long time (or in some cases, all of the above).
