[bluecalm]

I am tired of the HIIT nonsense. When it comes to cardiovascular fitness it's not even remotely enough to throw a HIIT session here and there. It's not enough to rely on intensity alone. You need volume and volume before everything else. By volume I mean a lot of light, easy exercise. You will benefit by adding some intensity once you you have enough volume in your training, probably not all year round and probably not too much.

Just talk to anyone who trains endurance sports. Read the recent "how to skate 10kms" that is making rounds lately. Look at any training program of competitive endurance athletes and you will see low intensity volume before anything else. The reason is there is that it works. There are adaptations that only happens during long easy sessions.

If you just care about carrying heavy stuff then you can ignore all of the above but there is more to fitness than that.

>>All other factors being equal, the man who can squat 400 lbs will always be fitter than the man who plays VR for 45 minutes every day--and the former can do it with a smaller time investment

Plenty of guys who can squat 400lbs who would be totally gassed after running a few miles or cycling up a moderate length hill. I wouldn't call it fit. I am betting on 45mins per day VR guy.

[zfnmxt]

> There are adaptations that only happens during long easy sessions.

What sort of adaptations? As far as I'm aware, adaptations are the result of significant stress. What are the stressors of a "long easy session"?

At any rate, my post was about physical fitness and health, not how to become a competitive athlete.

Many competitive athletes are not fit. A marathoner who has no muscle mass and who is physically weak is not fit--regardless of the fact if they can run a 2:15 marathon. Said marathoner is not resistant to adversity, e.g., consider how they'd do on a wasting disease like cancer versus an athletic 215lb male.

What competitive athletes do generally is not a useful consideration when deciding on training modalities. Assuming that what the pros do is effective because they're pros is logical fallacy and, regardless, these people are (genetic) outliers with differing goals.

Low-intensity, long endurance cardio is adversarial to increasing strength. If you want to be a competitive endurance runner then, sure, you need to adapt your training and you will need to do long endurance cardio. If you're just an average Joe who wants to be healthy and fit then it is not in your interest to do long endurance cardio. Injury rates are higher, it makes it harder to become strong, and many of the resulting adaptations are undesirable.

[multjoy]

Someone who can lift 440lbs but who sweats when they eat isn't fit, either.

>What sort of adaptations? As far as I'm aware, adaptations are the result of significant stress. What are the stressors of a "long easy session"?

The adaptations come from the cardiac system. Basically, the body can use more oxygen more efficiently.

>Low-intensity, long endurance cardio is adversarial to increasing strength

Increased strength is adversarial to improved cardio efficiency.

[zfnmxt]

> Increased strength is adversarial to improved cardio efficiency.

This is absolutely untrue. If you take a runner who doesn't squat and get them to squat (and get stronger) they will become a better runner. By becoming stronger, each stride becomes more submaximal. Of course how strong they can become will be modulated by how much weight they can gain--in the case of a runner, that will probably be a very modest amount before the increase in weight begins to negatively impact their performance. But even with extremely minimal weight gain, they can become significantly stronger from an untrained state in a way that only positively impacts their running performance.

> The adaptations come from the cardiac system. Basically, the body can use more oxygen more efficiently.

You misunderstood my question. If the session is easy, what is the stress which sufficiently disrupts homeostasis to lead to an adaptation? Easy things do not result in adaptations.

> Someone who can lift 440lbs but who sweats when they eat isn't fit, either.

Sure, they should do their cardio.

[multjoy]

>If the session is easy, what is the stress which sufficiently disrupts homeostasis to lead to an adaptation? Easy things do not result in adaptations

An "easy" run is a stressor on the cardiac system, because you don't spend all day with an elevated HR and commensurate lung work.

[zfnmxt]

Everything is a stressor. Doing nothing is a (negative) stressor. The question is is it a sufficient stress. And it is not.

Squatting 120 kg x 5 every day is a stressor, and provided you do no other strength training, it will feel hard. But you'll never get stronger than you already are.

[multjoy]

>Everything is a stressor. Doing nothing is a (negative) stressor. The question is is it a sufficient stress. And it is not.

You are wrong.

[mutatio]

> The adaptations come from the cardiac system. Basically, the body can use more oxygen more efficiently.

I'm quite sure HIIT is near optimal for improving VO2max - and if you look at it through the less of time vs. benefit then it's unrivalled in terms of cardiovascular health.

[multjoy]

Arguably it's the only way! A rising aerobic tide lifts all boats...

[multjoy]

>You need volume and volume before everything else.

There's volume and then there's volume. Obviously five minutes of HIIT between picking things up and putting things down isn't going to do a great deal, but especially in the cycling world there's a lot of research around easy volume work and high intensity sessions (Neal Henderson at The Sufferfest/Wahoo, TrainerRoad etc) and the general consensus is that if you're time crunched, then the long Z2 work is not where you want to be focusing your efforts.

The article isn't about a trained athlete, it's about the untrained/hobbyist for whom getting in sufficient volume just isn't possible.

>Plenty of guys who can squat 400lbs who would be totally gassed after running a few miles or cycling up a moderate length hill. I wouldn't call it fit. I am betting on 45mins per day VR guy.

Picking things up and putting things down barely raises HR. Cardio appears to be a dirty word around these parts.

[watwut]

HIIT is not meant to train you for long distance and I never ever heard anyone to claim so. How to skate 10kms is competitive athlete program and had literally nothing to do with goals of normal sedentary person exercising.

For a lot of people, actual ability to run up stars higher or be active for 20 mins with kids is what they want and need.

And it is fun. It feels good. You see improvements in own ability to do day to day things. It takes a while till those wear off and you start to stagnate.