Comment by valenterry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by valenterry | Hacker News Reader

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> Wrong and easy to prove that its wrong, just look at a training regiment of any elite runner in any distance.

That's a bad comparison. Elite runners' first priority is to win and get out maximum performance. But for regular people, the goal is to overall improve their body and condition using a small time span. Since the goals are different, the methods are as well.

That aside, I believe athletes _do_ use interval training (HIIT). But if you have a source, I'd be interested.

> The Born to Run fad has been over for years now. Consensus is incorporating barefoot running into your training makes little difference to performance

Again, I think you are focussing on pure/max performance. But I don't think that's the goal for the majority of people who start out with their training. You get higher speed / better performance when running with shoes for sure. But I think for the people we talk in the context here, the goal is to improve body condition and lose weight.

> That aside, I believe athletes _do_ use interval training (HIIT). But if you have a source, I'd be interested.

Yes, athletes do use interval training for specific purposes. But they don't do it for the majority of their training because it takes a lot to recover from. Since it takes more to recover, it limits how much training you can do. And athletes recover significantly faster than an untrained person. A fascinating read is by the guy who set the recent 10k speed skating record [0], he basically cycled for 7 hours a day.

An untrained person can't do 'HITT' properly, it takes too long for their heart rate to recover to normal. If they do something like 1 minute on, 30 seconds off, their heart rate during the 'resting' interval will still be pretty close to their working heart rate. They won't manage to keep it up for more than say 5 minutes (random number).

Now yes, 5 minutes of HITT is more effective than 10 minutes of LISS. But 1 hour of LISS is more effective than 5 minutes of HITT. And you can do 1 hour of LISS everyday without accumulating a lot of fatigue. Where as if an untrained person did HITT one day, there's a high chance that the next day they won't be able to preform at the same intensity. There's also significantly lower injury chance doing LISS.

[0] https://www.howtoskate.se/

So if an untrained person wants to get most of a fixed amount of time, say 1 hour effective training per week (which is not much of course), what would be most effective for them?

Sure, you are broadly correct, however.

>But for regular people, the goal is to overall improve their body and condition using a small time span

No, the poster above you directly specified running endurance. That's what we're talking about NOT just running for general health. And not limiting training to a couple of hours per week.

>interval training

Interval training in the context is a pace-specific running workout, not interchangeable with HIIT.

Besides that the main point would be that long slow aerobic training has benefits that HIIT doesn't, mostly regarding the volume of blood the heart can pump.

So its not just for performance. Long slow volume will give you a lower resting heart rate and adaptions that HIIT alone will not.

> No, the poster above you directly specified running endurance. That's what we're talking about NOT just running for general health. And not limiting training to a couple of hours per week.

Fair enough. I interpreted that differently, but maybe you are right and we were just talking about different goals/contexts.

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