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jcgadfly
jcgadfly g Jeff Craft
192 Post(s)
192 Post(s) Gender: Male Goal: Gain Muscle Date Joined: May 5, 2015
Posted

Ok, folks, I'm really confused about the uproar between HIIT and steady state cardio. I don't call it LISS because I probably go at more than low intensity but it is steady state. for the most part. There may be minor speed variations but nothing like I would do in a bout of HIIT.

 

The part I don't understand is this - are the exercise gurus here and in other places really trying to tell me that my 60-90 minutes of lifting heavy (for my old butt) weight is really going to be completely undone by my spending 30 minutes walking quicjly on a treadmill? BUT those gains will be miraculously save (and even added to) by 10-15 minutes of a combination of flat out sprinting for 30 seconds followed by a casual two to three minute stroll (if you get really gutsy you might move the speed up to a meander)? Seriously?

 

I apologize for the sarcasm but it's been a hard day and that's pretty much all I have left.

Old enough to know better, young enough not to care. I'm an eternal rookie - As soon as I stop learning I start dying.
cursed180
cursed180 g Cursed180
17 Post(s)
17 Post(s) Gender: Male Goal: Gain Muscle Date Joined: January 1, 2016
Posted

@jcgadfly I have been at a caloric deficit and lifting 3 days/week with 4 days off for a little over a year. During my off days, I'll usually do some cardio. For a few months, I tried HIIT during my off days, but I found that I wasn't recovering from my workouts... I'd be sore for a full week from any given workout. The increased recovery time is probably mostly due to the caloric deficit. While cutting, Steady State cardio seems to be where it's at for me... but your mileage may vary.

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cursed180
cursed180 g Cursed180
17 Post(s)
17 Post(s) Gender: Male Goal: Gain Muscle Date Joined: January 1, 2016
Posted

I'm not so sure about strength gains, but as far as recovery times go, HIIT is tough on the body.

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jcgadfly
jcgadfly g Jeff Craft
192 Post(s)
192 Post(s) Gender: Male Goal: Gain Muscle Date Joined: May 5, 2015
Posted
Posted By: cursed180

@jcgadfly I have been at a caloric deficit and lifting 3 days/week with 4 days off for a little over a year. During my off days, I'll usually do some cardio. For a few months, I tried HIIT during my off days, but I found that I wasn't recovering from my workouts... I'd be sore for a full week from any given workout. The increased recovery time is probably mostly due to the caloric deficit. While cutting, Steady State cardio seems to be where it's at for me... but your mileage may vary.

@cursed180

 

I'm the same way, I think. I brought it up here because @scott_herman is a HIIT guru and so many here swear by it. Usually HIIT just gives me pulled hamstrings and days off.

 

Perils of doing research, I guess. Some people see magic - others see woo-woo.

Old enough to know better, young enough not to care. I'm an eternal rookie - As soon as I stop learning I start dying.
crood
crood a Chris P.
467 Post(s)
467 Post(s) Gender: Female Goal: Train for a sport Date Joined: August 8, 2014
Posted
Posted By: jcgadfly

Ok, folks, I'm really confused about the uproar between HIIT and steady state cardio. I don't call it LISS because I probably go at more than low intensity but it is steady state. for the most part. There may be minor speed variations but nothing like I would do in a bout of HIIT.

 

The part I don't understand is this - are the exercise gurus here and in other places really trying to tell me that my 60-90 minutes of lifting heavy (for my old butt) weight is really going to be completely undone by my spending 30 minutes walking quicjly on a treadmill? BUT those gains will be miraculously save (and even added to) by 10-15 minutes of a combination of flat out sprinting for 30 seconds followed by a casual two to three minute stroll (if you get really gutsy you might move the speed up to a meander)? Seriously?

 

I apologize for the sarcasm but it's been a hard day and that's pretty much all I have left.

HIIT is good because it is more of a 'conditioning' type of training, it's good to boost your metabolism and adresses different reactions in the body than slow pace cardio.

 

HIIT is short and intense, which stimulates musclegrowth, oxygene fueling and gets your heartrate up enough to also be effective at fat burning.

 

The problem with strength gain and LISS is that, it is also really great at burning fat and calories.. but you trigger a completely different mechanism in your body.

 

The good old example is once more marathon runner versus sprinter. I think they are defenitally also visually clearly easy to separate.

 

If you were to be running slowpace / or for really long distances every day.. your body wants to do one thing: become lighter, loose unnecessary load (which is musclemass - it is high maintenance and the body needs already to be forced into keeping it, by continously training hard, continously setting stimulus, and feeding the right way), in order to become more efficient at doing just that.. slow pace cardio. (The body needs astoundingly little musclemass at all just to be able to i.e. jogg at a steady pace for a long time, and everything else is unneeded ballast, that hinders it at becoming more efficient at this)

 

On top of that slow pace and long time cardio is catabol, because the body empties all storages, which the the point people normally try to avoid to reach. (Also often happens due to too long training hours).

 

Thus it is great at making you thin, but also very great at making you loose musclemass. That's why you often see people that do endless sessions on the treatmill and jogging, being somewhat skinny fat. They become skinny and flabby.

 

HIIT is great whilst trying to hang on to musclemass and also wanting to gain strength, which is more of an anabolic phase. (keeping the body nurished and not completely depleted, setting impulses with intensity etc) and it releases a lot growth hormone. And the exercises are also far more taxing for the body.

 

Neither one or the other is superiour. It all depends on your goals.

 

Slow pace cardio is great, but it requires long time periods of doing it (45-60mins) to be "effective" enough. And that is the point where it collides with building musclemass and trying to keep what you gained while your body will reach a state where it actually wants to get rid of it :)

 

HIIT is great because it is short and intense, and the intesity sets the impulses for growth, and it needs less time to be executed. So while trying to keep musclemass. Getting lean and becoming more fit HIIT is mostly the better choice. It also has more effect on your cadiovascular system and your heart. Most slow pace cardio doesn't even get you to a point where your lungs pump like crazy and your heart really has a challenge to pump blood into all the places where it is needed.

 

Of course we see heavy bodybuilders like Kai Greene do slow pace cardio. But be aware that he weighs tripple the time of us all, when he walks slowly that is for him already exhausting as if we run a 5 storage house's staircase up and down for half an hour. And there is no way that a guy of such size can even do anything fancy or challenging anymore to get some intense HIIT work done, other than using the stairmaster or treatmill etc.

The catch with HIIT is of course it eats up fuel, as it is intense, that means if you are on a caloric deficit, and are trying to build muscle, and to loose weight, AND to be come stronger and and and... all at the same time.. you'll of course run into problems of bad recovery, feeling challenged, getting hurt .. and more.

 

This is nothing you can keep up for long. If you do it wrong, and the balance and amount of HIIT amongst your weight training and your nutrition and your sleep isn't right.

 

Training always exists in phases.. so depending on what phase you have you might need to adjust and utilize the right thing.

 

And then there are also goals, if you just want to be fit, loose some weight, do some weights etc, there is no need to torture yourself with things you find too challenging.
Depending on your age, it can also become a question of how much you can or should challenge your heart i.e. And if slowpace cardio might be more adequate for your speciffic needs.

 

You see there is always 2 sides to each coin. YOu just gotta pick the right one for the right purpose :)

 

 

 

Admin + MS Athlete You will get nowhere, if you don't move :) - crood -
cursed180
cursed180 g Cursed180
17 Post(s)
17 Post(s) Gender: Male Goal: Gain Muscle Date Joined: January 1, 2016
Posted

@jcgadfly @crood

 

Excellent post, crood! You really know a lot about fitness!

 

As a side-note HIIT workouts vs typical weight lifting have HUGE differences in calories burned each day(TDEE). I did HIIT-style workouts(Crossfit) 3 days a week for several months and tracked my TDEE. While doing these, I was burning an average of 3200 calories per day.

 

My little brother wanted to start lifting so I swapped out the workouts for a Strength Progression Program(RPT) 3 days a week. I assumed I would be burning the same amount of calories since I was still exercising 3 days/week. Instead, I was gaining weight. I recalculated my TDEE and discovered I was only burning 2400 calories per day.

 

So... for me, 1 day HIIT swapped out for 1 day lifting was a difference of 265 calories each day of the week. Over the course of 7 days, that single HIIT session would burn an additional 1800 calories that weight lifting did not.

 

I never understood the "why", but I'm guessing these differences were due to the factors crood was talking about.

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muscular strength
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