Do you skip workouts because you don’t have enough time?
Steady state cardio training is very common in the gym as a way to improve fitness. However, a different type of cardio is high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which has received a lot of attention in research lately because it is very time-efficient.
In HIIT training you repeatably switch between high- and low-intensity exercise blocks, instead of training at the same intensity the whole training session.
This study investigated whether HIIT results in similar improvements in fitness compared to ‘conventional’ steady state cardio.
The conventional cardio training was cycling 45 minutes at 70% of the maximal heart rate (training time: 50 min). The HIIT consisted of three 20-sec bouts of all-out cycling sprints, separated by 2 min of easy cycling (training time: 10 min).
Despite the 5 times lower training time, HIIT resulted in similar improvements in maximal oxygen uptake, insulin sensitivity, and mitochondrial content.
Therefore, HIIT is a good choice if you want to improve your fitness, but you don’t have a lot of time to spare.
In conclusion, 10 minutes of HIIT can result in similar improvements in fitness as compared to 50 minutes of steady state cardio.