[quote]OldFatGuy2 wrote:
[quote]susani wrote:
This is something I’ve been doing a huge amount of research into recently.
It may surprise you to know that HIIT isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There is no significant afterburn and it doesn’t torch calories as is claimed. Although high intensity burns more calories than low intensity duration matters too. Long duration, moderate intensity is easier to recover from and will burn more calories than a few short bursts of intense exercise.
If you can tolerate a half hour steady state workout it’ll probably burn more calories than 10 mins of HIIT. If you can manage to put in a few harder paced (but not intense) intervals into that then better still. If you can manage one short HIIT session and a couple of longer duration - easier paced workouts that’ll probably give you the best of both worlds - good fat burn plus all energy systems worked.
If you want more on this I can PM you a link to a very indepth review of the research - they don’t like us to post links on the forums.
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I’m very deconditioned at the moment and have been doing the following on my elliptical:
- 5 min warm-up
- 5 * 15 sec fast/ 45 sec slow HIIT (this gets my heart rate up to the mid-high 150’s, or 96% of my maximum heart rate)
- 20-25 min warm-down (until my heart rate gets below 120)
So I’m doing 30 min of cardio with my heart rate elevated quite significantly (even though the last 20 min is at a very easy pace). Would 30 min of moderate cardio be better than this? I really feel awful after these sessions and would be happy to swap out HIIT for 30 min of moderate cardio instead, but it seems to me that I’d probably get more benefit from the HIIT until my conditioning improves.
I’d appreciate it if you would send me the link you mentioned when you have a moment (I’m not allowed to send PMs for some reason).
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What you’re doing sounds great apart from the bit about feeling awful afterwards. That suggests you may be going a bit hard for your current fitness levels.
I think one thing to remember is that we aren’t all made the same way. Recovery rates can vary for lots of reasons (not least lack of conditioning) and some are most definitely built for endurance rather than speed and vise-versa. The good news is that you can build very good fitness levels AND stay lean on pretty much any combination of the two.
You also need to remember that what works best will depend upon your current fitness levels. Things may well change in the future.
If you don’t have decent strength endurance for say, kettle bell swings, but have good VO2 max and a high lactate threshold then your muscles will tire long before you get any kind of aerobic or anaerobic workout.
If you have very good strength endurance for a certain task you may well be too efficient and unable to get your heart rate up high enough to get a good conditioning effect.
In the running world the standard advice is to start out on the low intensity long duration stuff. Get a decent amount of conditioning under your belt before starting to introduce higher intensity workouts. You tend to get the opposite advice from the strength training world. The liklihood is that people are giving out advice based upon their own experiences - so based upon their particular body type. You need to try both and see what works for you.
If you recover best from steady state then I think perhaps a good idea is to start out building up tolerance for half an hour to 45 minutes of steady state running, cycling, rowing - a good mix. If you’re not very fit that will initially burn a fair number of calories. Over time try to get faster - so keep putting in the same or more effort. As much intensity as you can manage yet still recover well. Then perhaps add in some fartlek type intervals. If you’re running maintain a very comfortable pace then every so often have short burst of more intense running. As much as you can manage and still recover well. Gradually over time you’ll get fitter and eventually you’ll manage the HIIT stuff no problem at all. You’ll have the best of both worlds.
Those that don’t cope well with the long duration stuff (such as me!) can attack it from the other angle. Start out on HIIT but once a week try to do at least one longer duration workout where you keep pushing either pace or volume until you get where you want to be.
I’ll dig out that link (need to search for it again as it was deleted from where I posted it on here). I’ll get that to you ASAP. But the bottom line from that review of the research was that there is more than one way to skin a rabbit. Long duration lower intensity has more potential to burn calories simply because you’ll be able to keep it up for longer. But HIIT has other benefits that you won’t get from ALL low intensity training.
With both fat loss and fitness ALL high intensity/low volume can get you most of the way there (if you’re able to do it properly); ALL lower intensity/higher volume can get you most of the way there (if you’re able to do it properly). The very best results will come from some combination of the two (exact ratios being individual specific).