Hey guys, looking to cut from c. 15% bf to c. 7%, and I keep seeing a lot of conflicting information regarding the efficacy of the different types of cardio with regards to fat loss and muscle maintenance. Any consensus?
Thanks!
Posted Nov 28, 2015, 4:23 PM UTC
Interested as well and have meant to ask but keep forgetting. I apologize in advance for hopping on your post like this.
Last time I participated in a post on this topic, one of the more popular opinions was "I get injured less doing LISS so I do that"
In terms of absolute calorie burn, imo depends on time. Shorter sessions favour HIIT while longer sessions favour some sort of middle ground. Like 60-80% effort intervals. And really long sessions you'll be forced to LISS. There's no way you can burn more calories in 10mins than you can in 40, even factoring EPOC. IMO the cutoff point for HIIT is like 10-15 mins not counting warm up and cool down.
This is speculation though since the science involved is a pain in the ass to study. Too many variables to factor in, jog vs sprint gait, afterburn/EPOC, and session and interval times.
Afterburn/EPOC isn't that much btw, only like a few dozen cals.
Muscle sparing, probably doesn't matter unless you're elite level, and probably doesn't matter unless you're LISSing for rather long or fasting.
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It depends most how much time you have, however often you want to do cardio (at least 3 times a week I would reccommend, if you're trying to see significant improvements).
The reason HIIT is touted so much is that you burn a lot of calories for the 15-20 minutes you put in. If you have have <1 hour and don't want to do it every day, "regular cardio" (i.e. anaerobic threshold work, running 5 - 10k at a moderate pace, etc) will burn more calories overall, but obviously not more calories per minute. If you have >1hr every day/most days, you will burn a shitton of calories doing steady state. For example, if I don't pay any attention to my calories and I eat healthy/filling food, I will lose weight pretty quickly, because I'm burning ~1000 calories from exercise every day.
Typically, LISS compared with a weight lifting routine doesn't work for fat loss in the long run, just because time is usually a person's biggest excuse for losing weight. I also think EPOC here is getting slightly over looked.
There is a lot of weird myths surrounding LISS, that it burns more fat. Sure, if you're looking to burn a lot of calories, walk 15 miles, you'll burn more than if you were sitting, but is it a waste of your time? ehhh...wouldn't be my first choice. But after you stop walking those 15 miles, your heart rate will stabilize pretty quickly, giving you no real benefit other than sore feet and feeling pretty exhausted. As far as cardiovascular training, it is kind of useless. Your body will very quickly adapt, and then what, walk 16 miles? It just doesn't seem efficient. For the time it took you to stride along on the elliptical, you could have done some suicide sprints, ladder drills and box drills, improving not only your cardio, but also your neuromuscular efficiency, power/force production, and reaction skills.
HIIT seems to be superior for a lot of reasons: EPOC, time-sensitive exercise, can be fun/mix with resistance/bands/bells/etc or with the most basic of tools, do-able for most fitness levels, can be increased with just a small amount of effort (variables like surface, equipment, time).
It also depends on the type of lifting you are doing - some studies show low impact on strength levels with short bouts of sprinting or cycling, as they both involve the hips through a full range of motion. For fat loss, I would start with diet. If some cals can moved around and adjusted, great. If not, a small amount of HIIT once a week is the next plan. If weight isn't budging, cals need to be adjusted a little more or another round of HIIT can be included later in the week, it all really depends. Even the smallest amount of tweaks might allow fat to continue to decrease - we all want to lose weight on the most amount of cals possible :)
your heart rate will stabilize pretty quickly, giving you no real benefit other than sore feet and feeling pretty exhausted.
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Your body will very quickly adapt, and then what, walk 16 miles?
I don't understand your complaint. No benefit? You think your body somehow adapts to make cardio cost 0 energy? Sore feet? Exhausted? Maybe if you never ran before?
can be fun/mix with resistance/bands/bells/etc or with the most basic of tools
Fun? HIIT is brutal. If you are not athletic, you'll barely last a few weeks, you'll probably get injured, your will require significant recovery time and/or the number of sessions you do will be minimal to have almost no effect.
No matter how effective HIIT is on paper, if you can't physically do it, it's worthless. A unexperienced LISS runner can very quickly run multiple times per week w/o injury, and it doesn't take long to raise miles, reduce times, or increase frequency. They will burn significantly more calories than an unexperienced HIIT practitioner. Additionally, LISS can burn calories at a predictable rate and it is easier to track progress.
Since I didn't want to write a novel explaining every nook and cranny of what I was really thinking, my reply is a summary.
What I was saying is that LISS takes more time than necessary for people looking for fat loss, it is also an exercise that burns during the activity and not much after. My "sore feet" comment was just about the walking 15 miles example, which is clearly an exaggerated example....
And I'm confused, why are you limiting HIIT to just running? HIIT can be anything that raises your HR to 75-90% of your maximal HR for short bursts depending on age/athletic level.
It can be very scaleable depending on the person. HIIT can be fun, as long as the person is athletically comparable to the type of HIIT they are doing and it is something they may like....which means the OP just has to research what type of HIIT might be best for him/her.
"No matter how effective HIIT is on paper, if you can't physically do it, it's worthless." Did the OP say they weren't physically fit to do HIIT? And if you can't physically do HIIT, scale it? It will still be an activity that you can pair with a weight-lifting routine and not take 2 hours to complete as a training session. You are forgetting that everything can be scaled, whether it stays as true, by the book HIIT, or not.
"LISS can burn cals at a predictable rate" ...um get a HR monitor? Therefore there is zero reason to "predict". At this point if the OP is looking to get at a very low-bf, a HR monitor will just be a great tool to monitor progress.
The OP didn't disclose they were "inexperienced", just confused.
I agree with killerqueeeeen on many points, mainly that HIIT is totally scaleable. If we're talking about running, HIIT for me is 6 60-100 meter sprints with 4 minutes rest in between. HIIT for an inexperienced exerciser can just be going for a walk and walking a little faster between one telephone pole and the next one. It's really not that hard to incorporate.
I'm not saying anything about the complexity of the exercise.
Simply, HIIT requires a certain level of sustained intensity. Being athletic typically means that you have recent experience performing at this level. While almost anyone can achieve these levels temporarily, doing it repeatedly with minimal injury is skill acquired through knowledge and training.
It's critical that you push yourself during HIIT. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to make improvements if your programming requires maximum effort every time. That's like weightlifting where you only lift the maximum weight possible each session.
What does is 50% of maximum effort feel like in this content? 30? 70%?
When you practice LISS, you establish a baseline level of cardio that can be maintained. You gain the ability to estimate your energy capacity because the activity is only parameterized by distance and time. Since the activity isn't intense, you experience less injuries, which allows you to train longer and doesn't impact the rest of your life. And as I mentioned before, it's also easy to accurately calculate the calories you expend.
This makes LISS great for cutting. HIIT, OTOH, is great for performance.
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to make improvements if your programming requires maximum effort every time.
No, it's actually quite simple. Your maximum effort will change as you progress.
Look, LISS is not without its benefits, but if you're talking about trying to get sub-10% body fat (as the OP is), the best way to manage that is to increase your workout's intensity, not time or distance.
I appreciate your comments here, but you're talking about HIIT like its climbing a Mt. Everest. You are completely forgetting that fitness is scaleable - what is 75-90% for you may be 100% or 70% for someone else..that is why a person must be assessed or know themselves athletically.
The OP already 15% BF is quite good, and for him to get 7 or 8% (for whatever reason), that would take A LOT of time if he was doing LISS. I don't have time to spend 1-2 hours doing LISS, and if someone is competing, neither do they.
IF you're training for a marathon, triathlon, then LISS in your sport is probably a bette way to train, but if you're a powerlifter, playing certain sports, bodybuilding, etc LISS is not efficient, plain and simple.
Do whatever works man, but I would never put my clients through 1-2 hours of cardio, ever unless their specificity called for it or there was another clear reason for it.
It really doesn't matter all that much. The most important thing to consider is recovery. As you get down to a really low body fat, recovery and general energy levels can become an issue. So choosing cardio exercises that have a minimal/low impact eccentric component are generally a safe bet (so hitting an aerodyne or riding a bike or pushing a prowler). Besides that, I really don't think it will matter all that much outside of your schedule and time constraints. The most important factor is whether or not it fits into your schedule and whether or not you can bring the mental energy to your workouts on a consistent basis.
Honestly there are so many mixed options on the internet with what type of cardio is most effective. I would just try both types of cardio for a week and see what gives you better results. I personally prefer putting a show on Netflix and walking on the treadmill for 45 minutes. HIIT after taking pre workout has given me heart papulations.
There is no real consensus about it: both activities have their own pros and cons. If you want to try and get the best of both worlds you might be interested in Lyle McDonald's "Stubborn fat protocol":
The 'RPE' is a scale where 0 means no effort at all and 10 is maximum possible effort.
It worked very well for me and you can modify the duration and intensity of each block to tailor it to your needs, give it a try!
you won't adapt to HIIT as fast as to LISS. both are effective and can be used or even mixed up (as already shown below). Most important is to be sure your pulse is in the 60-85% of your max.
7% BF is absurdly low. You might want to revaluate that.
// if you weigh 180 lbs
// cut at 500 kcal (will lose muscle mass)
180 * (1 - (1 - 15%) / (1 - 7%)) * 3500 / 500 = 108 days
LISS is very controlled, so if you need to cut an additional X kcal, you can go run that amount fairly accurately.
I wouldn't do HIIT unless you already athletic and do some form of LISS at a moderate level. I also wouldn't do HIIT if you're uncomfortable raising your TDEE to cut.
What is regular cardio?
I've been using a mix of LISS and HIIT to cut with great success.
Right now with my calorie intake being low recovery sucks. So I keep my cardio low intensity. Zone 2 level (60-70% max heart rate) I wear my chest strap, sit on a bike or use the stepper mill. Play my nintendo DS or watch movies and burn a few hundred calories. When my calories are higher and recovery is improving, I change to HIIT to help me progress as an athlete and strongman.
From my research, my understanding is that HIIT is almost always superior to any steady state cardio because you 1) burn more during the workout, 2) burn more after the workout, and 3) build more muscle, which also burns fat. Also, that any steady state cardio you do only serves to improve your muscular endurance for that activity. So, for example, doing a 45-minute run at a steady pace is great if you're training for a race, but if you're just looking to burn fat, there are better (high intensity) exercises you could be doing.
Hiit is just the best bang for your buck but if you are trying to cut hard you should prob do both.
Do whatever one is harder for you
Just do both, and mind your recovery?
I find if you're looking to get some extra calories burnt, then walking on a treadmill on its steepest incline is a good way to do it without adding much extra training volume.
If you had to choose one I would suggest HIIT. I personally do both HIIT one day and LISS the next, sometimes throwing in some Tabata as well. Really do what you enjoy but I think the combination of both will benefit not only your physique goals but also your overall fitness.
Yeah I think I'll split up my week and do both. Thanks!
How long do you tend to do LISS for?
40 minutes if it's fasted and 60 minutes if it's after breakfast. I always do LISS outdoors so it's never boring to me.
Sweet, thanks a lot!
No problem man. Good luck.
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i've always kinda wondered the same thing. total speculation here, no research done or even anecdotal evidence to support these thoughts: HIIT is supposed to be muscle sparing (i think because it takes less time and is also more explosive). however, HIIT is also supposed to be more taxing on the CNS, which i take to mean your weightlifting sessions would lag (needing more recovery time, lower level energy, whatever). with this thought process, if you're not in a hurry to cut, i would almost imagine that shorter sessions of relatively low intensity cardio would be the way to go in terms of just losing fat and sparing muscle, because you're still aiding the whole caloric deficit thing, but also keeping your CNS running as close to optimal as possible, which will help preserve resistance based workouts. again, just my thoughts. this isn't how i train. i really have no idea what i'm doing. i run a 6 day PPL, practice IF, do fasted HIIT 3 or 4 days/week. it's all a mess.