Hey guys,

I've been doing some high intensity cardio lately, and no doubt, if you want to feel like you've had a damn good workout, and if you want to shed fat, high intensity cardio is amazing.

But I'm just wondering if anybody has any experience or better references on whether HIIT or long distance endurance cardio is better for your heart and body overall long term.

On the one hand HIIT would give you a more powerful heart and there's less wear and tear overall. On the other hand long distance seems more gentle and less likely to cause damage from spikes of excessively high heart rate/blood pressure.

Thoughts?

On the one hand HIIT would give you a more powerful heart and there's less wear and tear overall. On the other hand long distance seems more gentle and less likely to cause damage from spikes of excessively high heart rate/blood pressure.

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You can always buy a hospital bed and live with an IV in your arm if you're worried about heart rate.

Do what you feel is best for your body. What is most satisfying. I like moderate endurance heavier weights, it feels amazing. Like stretching your muscles after lazying around. My body responds to it physically too.

If you've got other stuff going on, HIIT is probably going to be tough to manage. I know I can't be hitting the gym heavy three times a week and doing HIIT on the off days without walking around like a ****ing cripple half the time. Most others who I talk to feel the same way. My calves, hamstrings, and quads just can't take that much stress.

Pure health reasons in mind I'd say go steady-state, so you don't rip your muscles and joints apart.

I really can't comment on what it does to your heart or lungs, but my assumption is they're comparable. I'm sure there are many many variables at play here - age, weight, relative conditioning, etc. HIIT seems like it would carry over most directly to stuff you're actually going to be doing in the real world. Ex. Moving a couch or whatever usually takes 5 minutes of hard work rather than 45 minutes of light work.

My personal favorite for steady state is 45 minutes of 15% incline uphill walking at 3 miles an hour. That'll probably kick the **** out of you as good as any HIIT program.

I'm sticking with HIIT. It saves time and muscle mass.

SmoothTalker said:

Thoughts?

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Yes. You worry too much.

Low intensity cardio is healthier on a day-to-day basis. Fast intervals with short recovery put your body under a lot of stress. There's a reason why runners only do those types of workouts for less than half the year. They're stressful! Not only that but world class runners probably only do intervals four times a week MAX and that's in their absolute toughest training weeks.

Even sprinters only do this type of work a few times a week. The other days they're working on their raw footspeed and block starts.

Doing high intensity intervals every day can lead to overtraining and makes your body very acidic. When you're body's really acidic, your blood ph can be thrown out of wack and cause a number of problems.