Fitness: Has high-intensity interval training been oversold?

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High-intensity interval training (HIIT) first topped the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual Global Fitness Trends Survey in 2014 and has remained in the top 10 ever since. It’s the darling of the fitness world, and there seems to be little that HIIT can’t do.

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A major reason for the popularity of HIIT is short periods of high-intensity exercise (1-4 minutes) followed by a short rest period. Health and fitness benefits have been shown to equal or exceed moderate intensity workouts that take twice as long.

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Gym crowds aren’t the only ones excited about HIIT. The research community has brought young people, old people, healthy people, unhealthy people, and everyone in between to the lab to see if the magic of HIIT is universal. By and large, yes. Most of the populations studied benefit from meaningful improvements in health and fitness. However, whether exercisers find high-energy exercise more enjoyable than moderate-intensity steady-state exercise is still a matter of debate.

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Panteleimon Ekekakis, Professor and Chair He has spent most of his career studying how different intensities of exercise make people feel in the Department of Exercise at Michigan State University. I’ve been following HIIT trends ever since news about the benefits of HIIT started spreading.

“HIIT has started to gain traction at an alarming rate and has become this major global phenomenon,” says Ekkekakis, claiming that about 700 studies on HIIT are published annually.

In the early days, HIIT was thought to be more suitable for athletes and the very fit, but it wasn’t long before fitness experts suggested it was worth it for the average Joe and Jill. It didn’t take. Exercise psychologists like Ekekakis were skeptical.

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“We all know that high-intensity exercise is uncomfortable, so it never works,” he said.

To get the most benefits from a HIIT workout, you need to train at 85-95% of your maximum effort (peak heart rate), which isn’t for everyone. The philosophy of pain-free exercise has always been embraced by a minority rather than the masses. have begun to publish data suggesting that they find it more enjoyable than low-intensity workouts.

Combined with fun that promises significant results in less time, it’s the holy grail when it comes to exercise adherence. increase.

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Still, Ekekakis didn’t buy it.

““It’s a lot more complicated than that,” he said of why exercise dropout rates are so high. I just make choices, maybe because I’ve found other things that make me feel better or make me feel more satisfied.”

Citing the preponderance of evidence proving that intensity keeps people away, Ekkekakis decided to take a closer look at HIIT’s track record of long-term adherence. The results were published in a recent edition of Psychology of Sport and Exercise. With his colleague Stuart Biddle at the University of South Queensland, Australia, Ekkekakis identified eight of his high-quality studies comparing HIIT and moderate-intensity exercise, all of which included at least his 12-month follow-up. was included. What they discovered is unlikely to make HIIT fans happy.

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“Lack of adherence and dropouts are major challenges for all forms of exercise, especially in unsupervised settings, but these problems have been shown to be exacerbated with HIIT,” Ekekakis and Biddle said in their study. ”, he said. “More people assigned to HIIT did not follow prescriptions when unsupervised, perhaps because they were unable to, compared to moderate-intensity exercise.”

Not all study participants stopped exercising completely. Some subjects were less motivated to maintain the same intensity on their own than when they were under the close supervision of their instructor. I set it to a moderate strength range. That’s not a bad thing — combined with the short duration of most prescribed his HIIT workouts, the health and fitness benefits likely aren’t as significant as they’re advertised.

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So where did the idea that exercisers prefer HIIT over low-intensity workouts come from, if all eight studies proved that the majority of people eventually gave up HIIT altogether? do you want?

Measuring the enjoyment of exercise turns out to be harder than you might think. People are not in a position to answer questions about how they feel during a tough workout. Please wait until after the workout to contact us. When all the hard work is done and most people feel their efforts have been accomplished, their feelings are very different than when they are completely sweaty.

“Most people feel better after exercise,” agreed Ekkekakis. “But they may feel better now that the terrible thing is over.”

Does that mean HIIT is overrated as a solution to sedentary habits? But that doesn’t make it a bad option. It’s not for everyone and it’s on par with most other workouts. The measure of an effective workout isn’t how successful you are in the lab, but whether you want to do it yourself.