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personally, I'd be cautious of using this article to build up an exercise routine. Yes, intervals / HIIT are really effective and they consume relatively littl

personally, I'd be cautious of using this article to build up an exercise routine. Yes, intervals / HIIT are really effective and they consume relatively little time. Being an egineer it's tempting to use this as a base for some sort of 80-20 heuristics and simply say "this is good enough" and cut the aerobics. But is it? It's definitely better than doing nothing. But if the goal is some sort of performance improvement (specially in endurance sports - cycling, running, etc.), 9 times out of 10 I'd go with what's today called "polarized training". The basic idea of polarized training is "yes, intervals are definitely useful to push the body further, but only after a buttload of cardio". The routine then looks something like for every one very low intensity, very long duration session a week, there's one or two shorter all-out interval sessions. The intervals alone would lead to a plateau pretty quickly... Happy to provide references in follow-ups, if anyone is interested.

affgrff2 4y ago
Interestingly, the polarized training you describe is also know as the 80/20 rule that specifically recommend the opposite (80% low intensity + 20% high intensity) of what you mean by 80-20 (do just 20% to gain 80% of results).
- MezzoDelCammin 4y ago
  ah, misunderstanding. What I meant is the somewhat natural tendency to see the 80% gains in 20% effort and then say "80%, that's good enough".
balfirevic 4y ago
> But if the goal is some sort of performance improvement (specially in endurance sports - cycling, running, etc.) It probably isn't, for most non-athletes and people who don't have a sport hobby. > yes, intervals are definitely useful to push the body further, but only after a buttload of cardio I definitely won't be doing "a buttload of cardio", so we're back to square one - what is a good 80:20 heuristics that balances time investment, discomfort and results.

affgrff2 4y ago

Interestingly, the polarized training you describe is also know as the 80/20 rule that specifically recommend the opposite (80% low intensity + 20% high intensity) of what you mean by 80-20 (do just 20% to gain 80% of results).

MezzoDelCammin 4y ago
ah, misunderstanding. What I meant is the somewhat natural tendency to see the 80% gains in 20% effort and then say "80%, that's good enough".

balfirevic 4y ago

> But if the goal is some sort of performance improvement (specially in endurance sports - cycling, running, etc.) It probably isn't, for most non-athletes and people who don't have a sport hobby. > yes, intervals are definitely useful to push the body further, but only after a buttload of cardio I definitely won't be doing "a buttload of cardio", so we're back to square one - what is a good 80:20 heuristics that balances time investment, discomfort and results.