redlude97

Well in terms of efficiency the most efficient way to lose weight is starvation. Weight loss and maintenance is most effective when it is sustainable, which means it's individual preferences and one size fits all doesn't work

jsk

Apparently it's not _that_ easy. 300W/hour is more like 1000kcal/hr. But even so, 300W for 20 minutes of a 1hr ride is not HIIT. Depending on your FTP and how big/small you are, that might be an easy threshold workout, or a pretty tough VO2Max workout. But when they talk about HIIT, they mean all-out efforts, think 15-20 second sprints.

The real problem with HIIT is that most people don't do it right, the intensity required to due true HIIT (eg Tabata protocol) is very difficult. Most people are unwilling or unable to do repeated maximal efforts like that.


Your math is off again. My last 4hr ride was over 3000 kj; granted that was at about 210W, but even so your numbers for the 120-150W range are way low.

jsk

Yep. It's not an either/or, it's all of the above.

redlude97

It's off by 3.6 as I acknowledge above

redlude97

In terms of what, general health or weight loss? There are many ways to skin a cat

OBoile

That's really handy. Thanks!

jsk

Yes.

kingston 

Totally depends on where you are starting and where you are trying to go. There's a huge difference between what it takes to go from 25% to 15% body fat and what it takes to go from 15% to 5%. Interesting infographic here.

Cyclist0108

From what I can tell, the point of the article is to test whether the common assertion that interval training is better than moderate, continuous training for reducing fat is supported by empirical data. The conclusion appears that it is not, i.e., "There were no differences between HIIT/SIT and MICT for any body fat outcome."

So the article is basically saying either form of exercise + healthy diet = equivalent weight loss.

canklecat

Excellent. That infographic perfectly breaks down the challenges to incrementally better classes of fitness. Achieving the elite level of fitness demands sacrifices way beyond the rewards for most athletes.

As an amateur boxer I was at the lowest body fat percentage for only at times over the course of a few years. The demands to achieve that were extreme and strained my marriage and family life. Besides working a full time job I was doing roadwork morning and evening, working out at noon, and again after work.

And even that doesn't guarantee success. It takes more than just low body fat and fitness. It takes proper training and coaching for any given sport. There are plenty of very fit but mediocre athletes. And, frustratingly, plenty of athletes with mediocre fitness and extraordinary talent and ability. Due to my Navy duty commitments, I had access to top level trainers only twice in six years, and did well during those few months. The rest of the time I trained myself, had no coach or cornermen, and fared less well, losing bouts I should have won, and barely winning bouts I should have won easily. The same would apply to almost every sport where optimal fitness alone won't get it done against equally skilled opponents.

At that level a slightly less fit but more talented athlete may beat an optimally fit but less extraordinary athlete (pretty much every Muhammad Ali fight after his comeback championship -- he was so much more talented than his opposition that Ali could be 10-20 lbs over his optimal weight and still win).

And when all else is considered equal -- natural talent, honed abilities -- an edge in fitness often makes the difference in winning. Many sports have stories of elite level athletes losing -- seemingly inexplicably -- to rivals they'd beaten before. In most cases when you hear the backstory it turns out the athlete who was expected to have won had experienced difficulties in training, distractions of being a celebrity, and wasn't quite at their optimal fitness level.

An example would be Greg LeMond's struggles after the 1987 hunting accident in which he was accidentally shot by a companion. I always though Eddy Merckx was unreasonably harsh in criticizing LeMond for focusing on the Tour de France to the exclusion of other grand tour races (which Merckx had dominated). But where Merckx wasn't wrong was in LeMond being distracted by pursuits outside of competitive cycling. At the elite level and peak of his career, LeMond shouldn't have even been taking a vacation, let alone a hunting vacation with inherent risks -- where even a tick bite fever could pose a career threatening setback.

Athletes usually enjoy only a brief few years of elite level fitness and should focus on their sport exclusively during that peak.

There's a great scene in the otherwise mediocre movie "The Joe Louis Story" (1953) in which Louis accepts a small slice of birthday cake, as his trainer Chappie glares at him for breaking his training diet. Seems like a small thing, but at the elite level of a brutal and extremely competitive sport, that's the sort of thing that can make the difference. It's not just changing the body's metabolism and setting back the body's ability to burn at maximum efficiency, but it also changes the athlete's mindset. Once an elite athlete accepts compromises, it gradually gnaws away at their determination. (A bit of a tangent, but the main reason boxers are discouraged from having sex while training for a championship bout has nothing to do with making the body or legs weak. The idea is to force the boxer to make sacrifices that make them edgy, irritable, angry and build up resentment that will be focused on the opponent in the ring.)

Ryder1

I thought the analysis indicated no type of exercise showed any benefit in fat loss. All equally worthless! From abstract's conclusion: "However, neithershort-term HIIT/SIT nor MICT produced clinically meaningful reductions in bodyfat."


Apparently we need a meta-analysis of the meta-analysis.

Ryder1

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28401638

This similar meta-analysis from earlier this year indicated both types were equally effective, but HIIT takes less time [more effort!]. And unlike the other study, this one compared TYPES of exercises. Apparently cycling sucks for weight loss. Or maybe just stationary cycling? You have to admit, sprinting does lend itself more to violent, CNS-inducing intervals. And injuries...

"There were no significant differences between HIIT and MICT for any body composition measure, but HIIT required ~40% less training time commitment. Running training displayed large effects on whole-body fat mass for both HIIT and MICT (standardized mean difference -0.82 and -0.85, respectively), but cycling training did not induce fat loss."