I'm going to start off being very blunt... If your fitness goals involve weight loss... Unless you just love going for long jogs, there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to do steady-state cardio instead of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) for your cardio workouts.
Before you start on that angry letter to me, hear me out!!!! I simply want you to TRAIN TO REACH YOUR SPECIFIC GOALS!!!! Steady state cardio is not bad, it's AWESOME for many reasons. It improves endurance, lowers blood pressure, improves cardiovascular health.... blah blah blah.... AND, If your GOALS are to run a marathon, 5k, Triathlon, or if you just simply like running, or cycling at a steady pace, do it!
BUT, If your ultimate GOAL is weight loss, STEADY STATE CARDIO IS NOT THE WAY TO GET THERE!
Now, lets get technical... hang in there with me!
High-intensity interval training (HIIT), also called high-intensity intermittent exercise (HIIE) or sprint interval training (SIT), is an enhanced form of interval training, an exercise strategy alternating periods of short intense anaerobic exercise with less-intense recovery periods. HIIT is a form of cardiovascular exercise. These intense workouts provide improved athletic capacity and condition, improved glucose metabolism, and improved fat burning
A HIIT session often consists of a warm up period of exercise, followed by three to ten repetitions of high intensity exercise, separated by medium intensity exercise for recovery, and ending with a period of cool down exercise. The high intensity exercise should be done at near maximum intensity. The medium exercise should be about 50% intensity. The number of repetitions and length of each depends on the exercise, but may be as little as three repetitions with just 20 seconds of intense exercise.
There is no specific formula to HIIT. Depending on one's level of cardiovascular development, the moderate-level intensity can be as slow as walking. A common formula involves a 2:1 ratio of work to recovery periods, for example, 30–40 seconds of hard sprinting alternated with 15–20 seconds of jogging or walking.
A 2008 study by Gibala demonstrated 2.5 hours of sprint interval training produced similar biochemical muscle changes to 10.5 hours of endurance training and similar endurance performance benefits. According to a study by King, HIIT increases the resting metabolic rate (RMR) for the following 24 hours due to excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, and may improve maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max) more effectively than doing only traditional, long aerobic workouts
High-intensity interval training has also been shown to improve athletic performance. For already well-trained athletes, improvements in performance become difficult to attain; increases in training volume may yield no improvements. Previous research would suggest that, for athletes who are already well-trained, improvements in endurance performance can be achieved through high-intensity interval training
So, Why does HIIT work better for Weight loss than Steady state cardio?
Cardio machines often show pretty graphs indicating where your heart rate should be for “fat burning” versus “cardiovascular training.”
You calculate this magical heart rate by subtracting your age from 200 and multiplying this number by 0.6. If you keep your heart rate at this number, as the story goes, you’ll be in the “fat burning zone.”
There’s a kernel of truth here.
You do burn both fat and carbohydrates when you exercise, and the proportion varies with the intensity of exercise.
A very low-intensity activity like walking taps mainly into fat stores, whereas high-intensity sprints pull much more heavily from carbohydrate stores. At about 60% of maximum exertion, your body gets about half of its energy from carbohydrate stores and half from fat stores (which is why many “experts” claim that you should work in the range of 60–70% of maximum exertion).
Based on the above, you might think that I’m actually arguing for steady-state cardio, but there’s more to consider.
The first issue is total calories burned while exercising. If you walk off 100 calories, 85 of which come from fat stores, that isn’t as effective as spending that time in a moderate run that burns off 200 calories with 100 coming from fat. And that, in turn, isn’t as effective as spending that time doing sprint intervals that burn off 500 calories with 150 coming from fat.
A study conducted by The University of Western Ontario gives us insight into how much more effective it really is. Researchers had 10 men and 10 women train 3 times per week, with one group doing 4-6 30-second treadmill sprints (with 4-6 minutes of rest in between each), and the other group doing 30-60 minutes of steady-state cardio (running on the treadmill at the “magical fat loss zone” of 65% VO2 max).
The results: After 6 weeks of training, the subjects doing the intervals had lost more fat. Yes, 4-6 30-second sprints burns more fat than 60 minutes of incline treadmill walking.
Although the exact mechanisms of how high-intensity cardio trumps steady-state cardio aren’t fully understood yet, scientists have isolated quite a few of the factors:
Increased resting metabolic rate for upwards of 24 hours after exercise.
Improved insulin sensitivity in the muscles.
Higher levels of fat oxidation in the muscles.
Significant spikes in growth hormone levels (which aid in fat loss) and catecholamine levels (chemicals your body produces to directly induce fat mobilization).
Post-exercise appetite suppression.
And more…
The bottom line is that high-intensity interval training burns more fat in less time than steady-state cardio.
Here is a VERY SIMPLE HIIT workout you can do anywhere! Repeat it as many times as you can for up-to 45-50 minutes. Start with 30 seconds of work and 30 seconds of rest (like the workout lists) and work up to 1 min of work and 10 seconds of rest.
