HIIT vs. Endurance

ejechols

Hi.

I'll keep this short. I go hills on elliptical for 90 minutes and burn 1400 calories. I do 40 minutes of HIIT, and burn 640.

Which is better for weight loss, endurance, and overall health?

gordowens

Bump... I'm curious on this as well

scottb81

The answer is both. They both work different parts of your system.

High intensity once or twice a week and medium to low intensity as many days as you want.

meshashesha2012

i exclusively did HIIT for about 2 months and when i went back to an endurance routine, it was way easier than before.
so at first i could barely run on 5.0 for 5 minutes.

then i went to HIIT only routines where it was 15 minutes of sprint intervals. that was the only running i did. 2 months later i was able to run at 5.5 speed for 20 minutes (could have gone longer but my time was up).

so i'm going to vote HIIT for endurance.

same with weight loss, i noticed much more fat loss in those 2 months of HIIT than i did the 2 months prior when i was exclusively doing steady state cardio.

BrianSharpe

The answer is both. They both work different parts of your system.

High intensity once or twice a week and medium to low intensity as many days as you want.

^^^ this

mittensofdoom

Per research HIIT burns more calories than a steady paced activity. From what I've read in fitness magazines, changing exertion levels challenges your body creating an extra burn. I don't run or elliptical much anymore but I did do HIIT when I did. 90 minutes of one thing is beyond my attention span, but 45 minutes of HIIT manages to keep me interested.

qtpiesmom

this is something my personal trainer said

dietary compliance is key to fat loss. Next in importance is exercise. Weight training is the most powerful way to change your body’s composition and increase your metabolic rate. For those of you that would like to add cardio, the two options are: steady-state cardio and high intensity interval training (HIIT).
People who do hours of steady-state cardio (like jogging) end up depleting their energy stores, eventually burning muscle for energy. This decreases metabolism over time. In order to retain healthy muscle tissue and still lose fat, do intervals. HIIT is quicker, proves to be more effective for fat loss, creates metabolic changes, and helps with muscle retention but not everybody can do HIIT. Steady-state cardio is safer, but takes twice as long to accomplish similar things. Overdoing either types of cardio can have a negative impact on your body. I would encourage people to limit cardio to 3x/week, 30-40 minutes per session.

scottb81

HIIT does not build endurance as effectively as steady state. My testimony Is that I did zero HIIT and a lot of steady state and could then run at 9.25 for 20 minutes or 8.25 for over 90 minutes.

However, I still say that both are needed for the best results. They target different systems and cause different physiological changes.

BrianSharpe

The answer is both. They both work different parts of your system.

High intensity once or twice a week and medium to low intensity as many days as you want.

+1

There was an article in February's "Runner's World" magazine extolling the virtues of incorporating HIT sessions into your weekly workouts.

cr9576

bump