20 Minutes hard or 40 minutes Moderate

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  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    It really depends on your fitness goals. I personally incorporate one day of HIIT per week that is of higher intensity and shorter duration but I have another 3-4 days of steady state cardio given I'm training for an endurance event....20 minutes of HIIT alone isn't going to prepare me for a century ride...long rides prepare me for my century ride.

    I also weight train 3x weekly. Really, you should probably be doing all of the above as part of an overall, intelligent fitness regimen.
  • Azdak
    Azdak Posts: 8,281 Member
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    "Do both. Variety is key when planing out your fitness strategy. Why does it have to be one or the other?"

    This. Also, if you're doing HIIT for your hard 20 minutes it is far superior to 40 minutes of moderate rate cardio. A lot of people fail to realize the aspect of EPOC. With HIIT and going hard for 20 minutes your metabolism will stay elevated for several hours after you're done so you're constantly burning calories at an elevated rate

    It might be "elevated for hours" but the actual burn during that time is fairly small. With the exception of 1 or 2 outlier studies, the total calories burned due to EPOC is about 100-150. Every little bit helps, but that amount can be easily exceeded with a longer workout.

    HIIT workouts are excellent for increasing fitness and good time-savers. Huge calorie burners? Not so much.

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