21 ms·

While you are somewhat dismissive about the results, they really only confirm many other studies which found that HIT (High intensity training, what is discusse

While you are somewhat dismissive about the results, they really only confirm many other studies which found that HIT (High intensity training, what is discussed in the article) training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times. This has been found for both non-athletes and athletes and in fact training for professional endurance athletes has drastically changed in the last 5-10 years (read interviews with e.g. professional cyclists, they train significantly less, but at much higher intensities than 7 years ago, lots of them have observed this transition). However, your point about body mass is correct, without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight. I also recall that there have been some studies that found it might be harder with HIT, because you are hungrier after HIT than low intensity exercise.

stabbles 4y ago
Do you have references for this? My understanding is that low heart rate training is still standard for elite endurance athletes.
- fsloth 4y ago
  How many people benefitting from more exercise are elite endurance athletes?
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    You might not want to emulate elite endurance athletes in that they get too much of a good thing…. That kind of training puts you at risk of atrial fibrillation.
    - kritiko 4y ago
      A recent study on this encourages exercise regardless. https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/2/e002154 https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/2/e002154 > Conclusion: Although older male endurance athletes experienced an increased risk of AF, the long-term risk of stroke was substantially reduced compared with non-athletes.
      - algoatecorn 4y ago
        True, but I think the commentor is referring to the U-shaped relationship of AF and endurance training. Higher probability with zero exercise, lowest probability at moderate exercise, but an increase in probability as you enter the extreme territory. In my case, 1000+ hours/year for 8 years led to this outcome
    - algoatecorn 4y ago
      PAFIYAMA. Happened to me at 27yo. Thankfully ablation solved the problem and I'm more or less "cured". Interestingly, I had many ectopic beats post-surgery which subsided once I regained my old fitness level.
- tonystubblebine 4y ago
  I actually think there's a bit of a split at the elite level. Eliud Kipchoge, WR in marathon, seems to only be doing one hard faster than race pace workout each week. Call that the HIT. The others are slow or race pace. What actually stands out most to me is the specificity of running close to a race pace marathon every week. https://www.sweatelite.co/eliud-kipchoge-a-typical-week-of-training-preparing-for-a-sub-2-hour-marathon/ https://www.sweatelite.co/eliud-kipchoge-a-typical-week-of-t... Then on the other end of the spectrum, the Ingebrigsten family of runners seems to put an emphasis on quality. But even though they do more faster running they keep a lid on the intensity to avoid training to exhaustion. It actually reminds me more of the "Grease the Groove" concept where the faster running may be more for neurological reasons. https://www.outsideonline.com/health/running/culture-running/people/what-makes-norways-ingebrigtsen-brothers-such-exceptional-runners/ https://www.outsideonline.com/health/running/culture-running... Anyway, neither of these two training models seem to have much in common with HIT. The bulk of the workouts are easy intensity and they are both seemingly ware of the dangers of high intensity. That's where injuries come from and so there can't be too much of it.
  - seafoam 4y ago
    the specificity of running close to a race pace marathon every week Suspect that this is also for neurological reasons
  - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
    The vast majority of that WR in marathon is doing low intensity long runs every day with only one day dedicated to race pace. That still broadly strikes me as primarily low-intensity training.
    - wooger 4y ago
      Well, it's polarised training specifically. Either really low, or very intense.
- eloff 4y ago
  Training endurance is likely a very different regimen than training for most types of sports.
AmericanChopper 4y ago
> HIT (High intensity training, what is discussed in the article) training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times Certainly not the same effect. HIT training doesn’t improve respiratory or cardiovascular fitness as effectively as continuous training does, and it doesn’t condition the muscles for endurance as effectively as continuous training does either. I don’t know much about cycling, but I know a lot about endurance running, and the typical training regime will utilise continuous training (such as long runs, recovery runs…), as well as high intensity training and some training that’s a mixture of both, like fartleks. The reason being they all produce different results, and you want the benefit of all of them. Here’s a video made by Eliud Kipchoge‘s athletics team that talks about the benefit of long runs: https://youtu.be/CeN1FeJIygQ https://youtu.be/CeN1FeJIygQ They have other videos about the other training intensities they use as well. Their training facility is also at a rather high altitude, which is basically its own form of training as well, or a legal form of blood doping, depending on how you look at it.
- code_runner 4y ago
  Just to chime in for anyone wondering who Kipchoge is if you don’t follow marathoning. He is hands down the best of all time and is totally in a league of his own. He trains constantly. His entire life revolves around it.
  - jeltz 4y ago
    And last year he got a new world record for marathon at 37. He is the best marathon runner in the world, currently and ever.
- logifail 4y ago
  > HIT training doesn’t improve respiratory or cardiovascular fitness as effectively as continuous training does, and it doesn’t condition the muscles for endurance as effectively as continuous training does either Assuming you're not looking to become an endurance athlete, is conditioning muscles for endurance something one should aim for? Why? "Improved cardiometabolic health" sounds like something everyone - including us sedentary workers with families and not much free time - might benefit from. Being able to achieve health improvements in short training sessions would appear to be a really important option.
sebastianz 4y ago
> training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times The HIIT part of their training has a different purpose than the slower part. Each type of training serves a different purpose. A lot of discussion currently also revolves around putting more emphasis on "Zone 2 training" with many hours & kms trained at lower intensity, for better endurance and efficiency of slow-twitch fibers. > read interviews with e.g. professional cyclists, they train significantly less, but at much higher intensities than 7 years ago Do you have any reference for this claim?
- dropofwill 4y ago
  Jay Vine recently said in an interview that last year his max hours per week was 30 and that wasn’t training, it was a big week in a grand tour. His coach at least seems to be on a mid 20s hours a week approach. Jay implied this was a change throughout the peloton, but you can still see old school strategies doing well (Bernal for example does huge volume in base from strava).
  - oezi 4y ago
    One key thing to remember is that humans can't do much more than 30 hours per week of exercise because they can't consume sufficient calories to compensate. It has come to the point that tweaking nutrition science to feed athletes better so they can train more is a key aspect of the ultra endurance training (e.g. the Norwegian Iron Men around Olaf Alexander Bu).
    - tayo42 4y ago
      That's 4 hours of activity a day. That can't be true. I do that. I should be fading away then but hover at the same weight.
      - oezi 4y ago
        4 hours of strenuous exercise. This should consume around 3000 kcals. Studies have found that humans cannot consume more calories than 2.5x their basal metabolic rate.
hutzlibu 4y ago
"training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times. " Like other commentors have said, certainly not the same effects, only maybe for the effects tested. High intensity training for example has a much higher risk of injury.
- jmmcd 4y ago
  I think it depends - running miles and miles at low intensity will damage my middle-aged knees more than HIT.
  - wooger 4y ago
    A common misconception, running isn't bad for your knees, poor form is bad for your knees.
  - strken 4y ago
    With zone 2 training, if you're not that fit you might be able to hit the right intensity just walking fast up a slight incline.
  - jasonladuke0311 4y ago
    > running miles and miles at low intensity will damage my middle-aged knees more than HIT Maybe, maybe not. But running isn't the only method of cardiovascular exercise.
dmix 4y ago
> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight I've asked on HN a couple times in the past for citations that support this meme and haven't yet found a good source on this. The connection between caloric restriction and weight loss isn't as straight forward as people seem to think, despite that being the standard correlation pushed since the 1950s. Calories seems to be the catchall metric pushed around, but it seems to be as much about what you eat, not just eating less. Although I'm sure asking someone to simply "eat less" would still ultimately contribute to weight loss. Whether calories is the thing that matters is the question.
- airbreather 4y ago
  https://www.totalwellbeingdiet.com/media/2266/18-00521-secrets-of-fat-loss_final-lr-singlepages.pdf https://www.totalwellbeingdiet.com/media/2266/18-00521-secre... https://www.publish.csiro.au/RD/RD20326 https://www.publish.csiro.au/RD/RD20326 The CSIRO has been researching for decades as to what the best bang for buck is with regards exercise.
  - dmix 4y ago
    There's no doubt exercise is essential here. There's just lots of people pushing the idea that diet / food restriction alone is sufficient for weight loss or that the goal of exercise is to "burn calories", suggesting the two are directly correlated.
    - roflc0ptic 4y ago
      I don't understand what you're saying: > people pushing the idea that diet / food restriction alone is sufficient for weight loss Diet/food restriction alone is strictly sufficient for weight loss: I'm pretty sure this is uncontroversially true, but it sounds like you're saying it isn't. Am I misunderstanding you?
    - jasode 4y ago
      >There's no doubt exercise is essential here. In the isolated context of losing weight, it doesn't seem like exercise is essential. Or to state in less absolute terms, exercise has less influence than diet choices for purposes of losing weight and maintaining it. In my case, I noticed that the pounds melted off when I stopped drinking sugary sodas and eating bread/snacks and switched to more vegetables with olive oil. In contrast , when I started exercising regularly, I actually gained more weight. The thing that messes up the simplistic idea of "exercise burns calories so with 2nd law of thermodynamics you lose weight" ... is the body's overwhelming desire to maintain homeostasis. (https://www.google.com/search?q=homeostasis https://www.google.com/search?q=homeostasis) Homeostasis means that more exercise can cause more hunger and thus bigger meals which offsets the exercise so no weight is lost. Likewise, deliberately eating less can cause the body to conserve energy and do less physical activity which re-balances the body to not lose any weight. For many folks, a long-term way to adjust the homeostasis is to change the diet from high-carb to low-carb and switch out the 400-calorie Starbucks frappuccinos and sugary sodas to green tea and 0-calorie sparkling water. These diet alterations have more chances of success than maintaining the discipline of burning 500+ calories a week via exercise. Exercise is essential for healthy heart and bone strength but there are counteracting factors when used as a tool to specifically lose weight.
smeagull 4y ago
> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight. There are drugs that say otherwise. As a side effect of medication, I've had to increase my calorie intake to maintain my weight. Not to mention the relative bio-availability of foods differs even when their calories don't. Fats and Proteins need more processing per calorie than Carbohydrates. I'm also fairly certain there are limits to the human bodies ability to absorb calories. i.e. you could saturate your diet by eating way too many calories, but your eventual weight gain would be at the limit of your body's ability to store fat.
- 988747 4y ago
  > As a side effect of medication, I've had to increase my calorie intake to maintain my weight. Is it a medication that increases energy expenditure? Something that boosts your metabolism?
waynenilsen 4y ago
I would also add that hit has a better chance of improving overall metabolic health raising resting metabolic rate and allowing you to eat more in the long run. Short run, low and slow will increase total daily expected expenditure but hit is a better long term investment.
- waboremo 4y ago
  Eating more in the long run doesn't seem like a better long term investment, especially when eating more for a lot of people results in making less optimal food choices and in turn bad habits. These bad habits can become exponentially bad as you age and start facing a lot of challenging events.
paulcole 4y ago
> training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times For a very specific set of effects. Other effects vary widely person to person.
karpichoge 4y ago
> training for professional endurance athletes has drastically changed in the last 5-10 years Not by drastically changing their plans to reduce the hours and do HIIT instead. Endurance training is what you do in endurance sports. A long distance runner needs to put in the miles. Hours after hours of running. That's it. Cyclists are on their bike 5+ hours regularly. Rowers do 10 sessions of 2+ hours a week, only few of them at high intensity. It's the hours that bring you the medal. In fact, in order to be able to perform those long hours, endurance athletes typically force themselves to keep he intensity down. You can go hard for an hour or two, but then you need a rest day next day. You won't make it to the Olypics on 3-4 sessions a week though. So, you need to be smart and tune the intensity so that after your morning 2h distance piece you can actually meaningfully push some weights in the evening and be fit next morning for the next piece. These 10-min HIIT "hacks" may be better for sedentary people than not doing anything at all. But they are not a silver bullet. To get anywhere, you need to put in the hours. No way around that. Source: I joined the team that brought my brother to qualify for Rio in an endurance sport.
n8henrie 4y ago
If you have references handy I'd love to read more. Specifically, it sounds you're saying that there is evidence in recreationally trained athletes that less frequent HIIT improves [meaningful outcomes] equal to much longer and more frequent training durations of moderate intensity cardio. I'm much more familiar with the evidence on strength training, where it seems that volume and intensity both have important roles. But at this point in my life, I no longer have the time to train as often as I'd like!
henrydark 4y ago
Unrelated, what if acronyms only contained adjectives and adverbs, and not nouns and verbs? I think we always eventually converge from something like "HIT" to "HIT training". Question for linguists
GatorD42 4y ago
Athletes are not training less at higher intensities overall. The dominant paradigm is polarized training - huge amounts of low intensity with small amounts of high intensity mixed in. https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/polarized-training-debate/ https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/po...
- raspberry1337 4y ago
  To add further, research has gone further into how intensity and low intensity improves different things - different fibres, genetics, factors of health etc. Heavy lifting affects fibers that are not affected by high-rep medium-low lifting, for example. Huberman lab and The Drive podcast that I have listened to have had several academics in this field discuss the divergent effects of different modes of training.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  Injury risk plays a part in that, especially for athletes, and is something most SIT/HIIT studies that focus on metabolic impacts don't usually measure: https://www.minervamedica.it/en/journals/sports-med-physical-fitness/article.php?cod=R40Y2019N07A1206 https://www.minervamedica.it/en/journals/sports-med-physical... > With particularly high rates of knee and ankle sprains and strains, neuromuscular training and pre-strengthening programs, which have been previously demonstrated to be effective among young athletes, may be particularly worthwhile in prospective participants
- TeMPOraL 4y ago
  That's interesting. Makes sense for athletes, but unfortunately seems not transferable to non-athletes, simply because hardly anyone has time for "huge amounts of low intensity" training. Some people find success in organizing their life to get enough exercise in the natural way, as part of activities of their day, but I think the popularity of HIIT in recent days clearly indicates there's also lots of people who want to optimize for minimum of time spent on exercising. Myself I'm one of such people.
  - sn9 4y ago
throw1234651234 4y ago
They are correctly dismissive - you won't run a 5k from 3x8mins a week. Nor will you deadlift 500 lbs. Nor will you get a good sport. It's a good tidbit for "something is better than nothing", but no more than that.
- logicchains 4y ago
  >Nor will you deadlift 500 lbs Maybe not 500lbs but somebody could certainly eventually deadlift 400lbs from 3x8 minutes once a week, as long as they keep it intense and keep increasing the weight. I say that as someone who can deadlift more than 400lbs after many years of practicing around 30 minutes/week. If you're lifting hard, a week is barely enough time for the body to recover anyway.
  - throw1234651234 4y ago
    1. You are not counting warm up. 2. You are not counting specialization? What, do you just dl? What about bench,row,squat,ohp,PU? 3. What about stretching and other maintenance? 4. Diet, sleep, etc. I believe you, but you are really confusing people who don't know what it takes like the poster above.
- jeltz 4y ago
  Aside: Running a 5k is something some people can do without any training at all. I ran about 5 km without stopping the second time I ran after 10 years of inactivity and I am sure I could have done it the first time too if I had really wanted to. A more reasonable challenge would be to run a 20 minute 5k. I feel that is roughly equivalent to dead lifting 500 lbs.
  - throw1234651234 4y ago
    A reasonable challenge would be to run a 24 minute (8min/mile) 5k without falling apart in the next two days. Most people cannot run 3 miles at a 9 minute pace consistently. This is assuming low BMI. "I feel that is roughly equivalent to dead lifting 500 lbs." It is and it's not. No one naturally deadlifts 500lbs. Maybe 315, maybe. 500lbs is 3+ years of training. Most won't ever hit it even after 10. (Diet, sleep, injuries). A lot of 10 year olds can run 6min miles due to low bw though. It's two completely different standards. With that said, you are absolute underrating the difficulty of both.
dr_dshiv 4y ago
> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight. I’ve never believed this — only because my weight is so consistent and my eating is not. My body must have a way to regulate the absorption of calories from the gut. When I have some insanely high calorie meal, my body doesn’t necessarily absorb all the calories. This seems easy to measure, so I must be wrong. Or…
- grogenaut 4y ago
  It's pretty easy to come up with ways the body wouldn't take up calories. I and everyone here has had diarrhea for example. I've eaten 5k calories on a sedentary day with no impact on weight as well tho it's hard to account for water without a strict accounting. What's harder to refute is the loss of weight due to calorie restriction which is mostly physics. This is what the gp is talking about.
- gnad_sucks 4y ago
  There's a lot of truth in what you're saying. But maybe they use calorie intake to mean "calories actually absorbed by your body", and not "calories present in the food you put into your mouth"? Just generally speaking it would be difficult to believe that calory absorption doesn't depend on anything.
- edanm 4y ago
  > I’ve never believed this — only because my weight is so consistent and my eating is not. That's only one side of the equation. It is a basically proven fact (and largely implied by physics) that `calorie intake - expenditure = net weight change`. That is pretty much beyond dispute. It is also true that some things affect expenditure, and it seems likely that most people have a "set point" that your body attempts to return to. This is also almost certainly changeable, as people have managed to change it in the past. (And this is less surely true than other things known.) So yes, it's entirely possible to eat "inconsistently" and not have net weight change, your body is probably subconciously causing you to eat less after you eat large meals, and vice versa. Or possibly causing you to expend more energy after large meals.
  - 4y ago
derrida 4y ago
> they really only confirm many other studies which found that HIT (High intensity training, what is discussed in the article) training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times. Show me 1 conventionally conceived of "endurance athlete" amateur mid of the pack or professional who has adapted this? Marathon, Iron man etc. Just 1. I'd love to see if anyone got a result in a marathon etc that was like a pb or close to a pb this way. I highly doubt.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight. you could with tapeworms! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucestoda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucestoda

stabbles 4y ago

Do you have references for this? My understanding is that low heart rate training is still standard for elite endurance athletes.

fsloth 4y ago
How many people benefitting from more exercise are elite endurance athletes?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  You might not want to emulate elite endurance athletes in that they get too much of a good thing…. That kind of training puts you at risk of atrial fibrillation.
  - kritiko 4y ago
    A recent study on this encourages exercise regardless. https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/2/e002154 https://openheart.bmj.com/content/9/2/e002154 > Conclusion: Although older male endurance athletes experienced an increased risk of AF, the long-term risk of stroke was substantially reduced compared with non-athletes.
    - algoatecorn 4y ago
      True, but I think the commentor is referring to the U-shaped relationship of AF and endurance training. Higher probability with zero exercise, lowest probability at moderate exercise, but an increase in probability as you enter the extreme territory. In my case, 1000+ hours/year for 8 years led to this outcome
  - algoatecorn 4y ago
    PAFIYAMA. Happened to me at 27yo. Thankfully ablation solved the problem and I'm more or less "cured". Interestingly, I had many ectopic beats post-surgery which subsided once I regained my old fitness level.
tonystubblebine 4y ago
I actually think there's a bit of a split at the elite level. Eliud Kipchoge, WR in marathon, seems to only be doing one hard faster than race pace workout each week. Call that the HIT. The others are slow or race pace. What actually stands out most to me is the specificity of running close to a race pace marathon every week. https://www.sweatelite.co/eliud-kipchoge-a-typical-week-of-training-preparing-for-a-sub-2-hour-marathon/ https://www.sweatelite.co/eliud-kipchoge-a-typical-week-of-t... Then on the other end of the spectrum, the Ingebrigsten family of runners seems to put an emphasis on quality. But even though they do more faster running they keep a lid on the intensity to avoid training to exhaustion. It actually reminds me more of the "Grease the Groove" concept where the faster running may be more for neurological reasons. https://www.outsideonline.com/health/running/culture-running/people/what-makes-norways-ingebrigtsen-brothers-such-exceptional-runners/ https://www.outsideonline.com/health/running/culture-running... Anyway, neither of these two training models seem to have much in common with HIT. The bulk of the workouts are easy intensity and they are both seemingly ware of the dangers of high intensity. That's where injuries come from and so there can't be too much of it.
- seafoam 4y ago
  the specificity of running close to a race pace marathon every week Suspect that this is also for neurological reasons
- SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
  The vast majority of that WR in marathon is doing low intensity long runs every day with only one day dedicated to race pace. That still broadly strikes me as primarily low-intensity training.
  - wooger 4y ago
    Well, it's polarised training specifically. Either really low, or very intense.
eloff 4y ago
Training endurance is likely a very different regimen than training for most types of sports.

AmericanChopper 4y ago

> HIT (High intensity training, what is discussed in the article) training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times Certainly not the same effect. HIT training doesn’t improve respiratory or cardiovascular fitness as effectively as continuous training does, and it doesn’t condition the muscles for endurance as effectively as continuous training does either. I don’t know much about cycling, but I know a lot about endurance running, and the typical training regime will utilise continuous training (such as long runs, recovery runs…), as well as high intensity training and some training that’s a mixture of both, like fartleks. The reason being they all produce different results, and you want the benefit of all of them. Here’s a video made by Eliud Kipchoge‘s athletics team that talks about the benefit of long runs: https://youtu.be/CeN1FeJIygQ https://youtu.be/CeN1FeJIygQ They have other videos about the other training intensities they use as well. Their training facility is also at a rather high altitude, which is basically its own form of training as well, or a legal form of blood doping, depending on how you look at it.

code_runner 4y ago
Just to chime in for anyone wondering who Kipchoge is if you don’t follow marathoning. He is hands down the best of all time and is totally in a league of his own. He trains constantly. His entire life revolves around it.
- jeltz 4y ago
  And last year he got a new world record for marathon at 37. He is the best marathon runner in the world, currently and ever.
logifail 4y ago
> HIT training doesn’t improve respiratory or cardiovascular fitness as effectively as continuous training does, and it doesn’t condition the muscles for endurance as effectively as continuous training does either Assuming you're not looking to become an endurance athlete, is conditioning muscles for endurance something one should aim for? Why? "Improved cardiometabolic health" sounds like something everyone - including us sedentary workers with families and not much free time - might benefit from. Being able to achieve health improvements in short training sessions would appear to be a really important option.

sebastianz 4y ago

> training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times The HIIT part of their training has a different purpose than the slower part. Each type of training serves a different purpose. A lot of discussion currently also revolves around putting more emphasis on "Zone 2 training" with many hours & kms trained at lower intensity, for better endurance and efficiency of slow-twitch fibers. > read interviews with e.g. professional cyclists, they train significantly less, but at much higher intensities than 7 years ago Do you have any reference for this claim?

dropofwill 4y ago
Jay Vine recently said in an interview that last year his max hours per week was 30 and that wasn’t training, it was a big week in a grand tour. His coach at least seems to be on a mid 20s hours a week approach. Jay implied this was a change throughout the peloton, but you can still see old school strategies doing well (Bernal for example does huge volume in base from strava).
- oezi 4y ago
  One key thing to remember is that humans can't do much more than 30 hours per week of exercise because they can't consume sufficient calories to compensate. It has come to the point that tweaking nutrition science to feed athletes better so they can train more is a key aspect of the ultra endurance training (e.g. the Norwegian Iron Men around Olaf Alexander Bu).
  - tayo42 4y ago
    That's 4 hours of activity a day. That can't be true. I do that. I should be fading away then but hover at the same weight.
    - oezi 4y ago
      4 hours of strenuous exercise. This should consume around 3000 kcals. Studies have found that humans cannot consume more calories than 2.5x their basal metabolic rate.

hutzlibu 4y ago

"training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times. " Like other commentors have said, certainly not the same effects, only maybe for the effects tested. High intensity training for example has a much higher risk of injury.

jmmcd 4y ago
I think it depends - running miles and miles at low intensity will damage my middle-aged knees more than HIT.
- wooger 4y ago
  A common misconception, running isn't bad for your knees, poor form is bad for your knees.
- strken 4y ago
  With zone 2 training, if you're not that fit you might be able to hit the right intensity just walking fast up a slight incline.
- jasonladuke0311 4y ago
  > running miles and miles at low intensity will damage my middle-aged knees more than HIT Maybe, maybe not. But running isn't the only method of cardiovascular exercise.

dmix 4y ago

> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight I've asked on HN a couple times in the past for citations that support this meme and haven't yet found a good source on this. The connection between caloric restriction and weight loss isn't as straight forward as people seem to think, despite that being the standard correlation pushed since the 1950s. Calories seems to be the catchall metric pushed around, but it seems to be as much about what you eat, not just eating less. Although I'm sure asking someone to simply "eat less" would still ultimately contribute to weight loss. Whether calories is the thing that matters is the question.

airbreather 4y ago
https://www.totalwellbeingdiet.com/media/2266/18-00521-secrets-of-fat-loss_final-lr-singlepages.pdf https://www.totalwellbeingdiet.com/media/2266/18-00521-secre... https://www.publish.csiro.au/RD/RD20326 https://www.publish.csiro.au/RD/RD20326 The CSIRO has been researching for decades as to what the best bang for buck is with regards exercise.
- dmix 4y ago
  There's no doubt exercise is essential here. There's just lots of people pushing the idea that diet / food restriction alone is sufficient for weight loss or that the goal of exercise is to "burn calories", suggesting the two are directly correlated.
  - roflc0ptic 4y ago
    I don't understand what you're saying: > people pushing the idea that diet / food restriction alone is sufficient for weight loss Diet/food restriction alone is strictly sufficient for weight loss: I'm pretty sure this is uncontroversially true, but it sounds like you're saying it isn't. Am I misunderstanding you?
  - jasode 4y ago
    >There's no doubt exercise is essential here. In the isolated context of losing weight, it doesn't seem like exercise is essential. Or to state in less absolute terms, exercise has less influence than diet choices for purposes of losing weight and maintaining it. In my case, I noticed that the pounds melted off when I stopped drinking sugary sodas and eating bread/snacks and switched to more vegetables with olive oil. In contrast , when I started exercising regularly, I actually gained more weight. The thing that messes up the simplistic idea of "exercise burns calories so with 2nd law of thermodynamics you lose weight" ... is the body's overwhelming desire to maintain homeostasis. (https://www.google.com/search?q=homeostasis https://www.google.com/search?q=homeostasis) Homeostasis means that more exercise can cause more hunger and thus bigger meals which offsets the exercise so no weight is lost. Likewise, deliberately eating less can cause the body to conserve energy and do less physical activity which re-balances the body to not lose any weight. For many folks, a long-term way to adjust the homeostasis is to change the diet from high-carb to low-carb and switch out the 400-calorie Starbucks frappuccinos and sugary sodas to green tea and 0-calorie sparkling water. These diet alterations have more chances of success than maintaining the discipline of burning 500+ calories a week via exercise. Exercise is essential for healthy heart and bone strength but there are counteracting factors when used as a tool to specifically lose weight.

smeagull 4y ago

> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight. There are drugs that say otherwise. As a side effect of medication, I've had to increase my calorie intake to maintain my weight. Not to mention the relative bio-availability of foods differs even when their calories don't. Fats and Proteins need more processing per calorie than Carbohydrates. I'm also fairly certain there are limits to the human bodies ability to absorb calories. i.e. you could saturate your diet by eating way too many calories, but your eventual weight gain would be at the limit of your body's ability to store fat.

988747 4y ago
> As a side effect of medication, I've had to increase my calorie intake to maintain my weight. Is it a medication that increases energy expenditure? Something that boosts your metabolism?

waynenilsen 4y ago

I would also add that hit has a better chance of improving overall metabolic health raising resting metabolic rate and allowing you to eat more in the long run. Short run, low and slow will increase total daily expected expenditure but hit is a better long term investment.

waboremo 4y ago
Eating more in the long run doesn't seem like a better long term investment, especially when eating more for a lot of people results in making less optimal food choices and in turn bad habits. These bad habits can become exponentially bad as you age and start facing a lot of challenging events.

paulcole 4y ago

> training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times For a very specific set of effects. Other effects vary widely person to person.

karpichoge 4y ago

> training for professional endurance athletes has drastically changed in the last 5-10 years Not by drastically changing their plans to reduce the hours and do HIIT instead. Endurance training is what you do in endurance sports. A long distance runner needs to put in the miles. Hours after hours of running. That's it. Cyclists are on their bike 5+ hours regularly. Rowers do 10 sessions of 2+ hours a week, only few of them at high intensity. It's the hours that bring you the medal. In fact, in order to be able to perform those long hours, endurance athletes typically force themselves to keep he intensity down. You can go hard for an hour or two, but then you need a rest day next day. You won't make it to the Olypics on 3-4 sessions a week though. So, you need to be smart and tune the intensity so that after your morning 2h distance piece you can actually meaningfully push some weights in the evening and be fit next morning for the next piece. These 10-min HIIT "hacks" may be better for sedentary people than not doing anything at all. But they are not a silver bullet. To get anywhere, you need to put in the hours. No way around that. Source: I joined the team that brought my brother to qualify for Rio in an endurance sport.

n8henrie 4y ago

If you have references handy I'd love to read more. Specifically, it sounds you're saying that there is evidence in recreationally trained athletes that less frequent HIIT improves [meaningful outcomes] equal to much longer and more frequent training durations of moderate intensity cardio. I'm much more familiar with the evidence on strength training, where it seems that volume and intensity both have important roles. But at this point in my life, I no longer have the time to train as often as I'd like!

henrydark 4y ago

Unrelated, what if acronyms only contained adjectives and adverbs, and not nouns and verbs? I think we always eventually converge from something like "HIT" to "HIT training". Question for linguists

GatorD42 4y ago

Athletes are not training less at higher intensities overall. The dominant paradigm is polarized training - huge amounts of low intensity with small amounts of high intensity mixed in. https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/polarized-training-debate/ https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/po...

raspberry1337 4y ago
To add further, research has gone further into how intensity and low intensity improves different things - different fibres, genetics, factors of health etc. Heavy lifting affects fibers that are not affected by high-rep medium-low lifting, for example. Huberman lab and The Drive podcast that I have listened to have had several academics in this field discuss the divergent effects of different modes of training.
trynewideas 4y ago
Injury risk plays a part in that, especially for athletes, and is something most SIT/HIIT studies that focus on metabolic impacts don't usually measure: https://www.minervamedica.it/en/journals/sports-med-physical-fitness/article.php?cod=R40Y2019N07A1206 https://www.minervamedica.it/en/journals/sports-med-physical... > With particularly high rates of knee and ankle sprains and strains, neuromuscular training and pre-strengthening programs, which have been previously demonstrated to be effective among young athletes, may be particularly worthwhile in prospective participants
TeMPOraL 4y ago
That's interesting. Makes sense for athletes, but unfortunately seems not transferable to non-athletes, simply because hardly anyone has time for "huge amounts of low intensity" training. Some people find success in organizing their life to get enough exercise in the natural way, as part of activities of their day, but I think the popularity of HIIT in recent days clearly indicates there's also lots of people who want to optimize for minimum of time spent on exercising. Myself I'm one of such people.
- sn9 4y ago

throw1234651234 4y ago

They are correctly dismissive - you won't run a 5k from 3x8mins a week. Nor will you deadlift 500 lbs. Nor will you get a good sport. It's a good tidbit for "something is better than nothing", but no more than that.

logicchains 4y ago
>Nor will you deadlift 500 lbs Maybe not 500lbs but somebody could certainly eventually deadlift 400lbs from 3x8 minutes once a week, as long as they keep it intense and keep increasing the weight. I say that as someone who can deadlift more than 400lbs after many years of practicing around 30 minutes/week. If you're lifting hard, a week is barely enough time for the body to recover anyway.
- throw1234651234 4y ago
  1. You are not counting warm up. 2. You are not counting specialization? What, do you just dl? What about bench,row,squat,ohp,PU? 3. What about stretching and other maintenance? 4. Diet, sleep, etc. I believe you, but you are really confusing people who don't know what it takes like the poster above.
jeltz 4y ago
Aside: Running a 5k is something some people can do without any training at all. I ran about 5 km without stopping the second time I ran after 10 years of inactivity and I am sure I could have done it the first time too if I had really wanted to. A more reasonable challenge would be to run a 20 minute 5k. I feel that is roughly equivalent to dead lifting 500 lbs.
- throw1234651234 4y ago
  A reasonable challenge would be to run a 24 minute (8min/mile) 5k without falling apart in the next two days. Most people cannot run 3 miles at a 9 minute pace consistently. This is assuming low BMI. "I feel that is roughly equivalent to dead lifting 500 lbs." It is and it's not. No one naturally deadlifts 500lbs. Maybe 315, maybe. 500lbs is 3+ years of training. Most won't ever hit it even after 10. (Diet, sleep, injuries). A lot of 10 year olds can run 6min miles due to low bw though. It's two completely different standards. With that said, you are absolute underrating the difficulty of both.

dr_dshiv 4y ago

> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight. I’ve never believed this — only because my weight is so consistent and my eating is not. My body must have a way to regulate the absorption of calories from the gut. When I have some insanely high calorie meal, my body doesn’t necessarily absorb all the calories. This seems easy to measure, so I must be wrong. Or…

grogenaut 4y ago
It's pretty easy to come up with ways the body wouldn't take up calories. I and everyone here has had diarrhea for example. I've eaten 5k calories on a sedentary day with no impact on weight as well tho it's hard to account for water without a strict accounting. What's harder to refute is the loss of weight due to calorie restriction which is mostly physics. This is what the gp is talking about.
gnad_sucks 4y ago
There's a lot of truth in what you're saying. But maybe they use calorie intake to mean "calories actually absorbed by your body", and not "calories present in the food you put into your mouth"? Just generally speaking it would be difficult to believe that calory absorption doesn't depend on anything.
edanm 4y ago
> I’ve never believed this — only because my weight is so consistent and my eating is not. That's only one side of the equation. It is a basically proven fact (and largely implied by physics) that `calorie intake - expenditure = net weight change`. That is pretty much beyond dispute. It is also true that some things affect expenditure, and it seems likely that most people have a "set point" that your body attempts to return to. This is also almost certainly changeable, as people have managed to change it in the past. (And this is less surely true than other things known.) So yes, it's entirely possible to eat "inconsistently" and not have net weight change, your body is probably subconciously causing you to eat less after you eat large meals, and vice versa. Or possibly causing you to expend more energy after large meals.
- 4y ago

derrida 4y ago

> they really only confirm many other studies which found that HIT (High intensity training, what is discussed in the article) training achieves the same effects as much longer endurance training at much shorter times. Show me 1 conventionally conceived of "endurance athlete" amateur mid of the pack or professional who has adapted this? Marathon, Iron man etc. Just 1. I'd love to see if anyone got a result in a marathon etc that was like a pb or close to a pb this way. I highly doubt.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

> without making your calorie intake less than your expenditure you will not loose weight. you could with tapeworms! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucestoda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucestoda