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As an anecdote of one, I was doing moderate intensity endurance exercise for a couple years with only modest improvements in basic cardiovascular metrics that k

As an anecdote of one, I was doing moderate intensity endurance exercise for a couple years with only modest improvements in basic cardiovascular metrics that kind of flatlined over time. As an experiment, I switched to high-intensity interval type training for a couple months, which required about half the time to do. All of my cardiovascular metrics immediately changed in a strongly positive way. When I did the old endurance training, performance was much higher than it had been before the high-intensity training. It is the strongest positive effect I have ever seen from any exercise/gym theory that has been widely promulgated. I never expected to see my cardiovascular metrics change as quickly or as much as they did.

asdfman123 6d ago
You probably spent all that time training your cardiovascular base, which takes a long time to do. Then, you capped them off with anaerobic gains that were only possible with that prior work. For optimum gain you should mix moderate exercise with intense exercise, but the time you put in likely made your later success possible.
- kazinator 6d ago
  To be competitive in the sport, you need the pyramid method with the high volume base of light effort, middle of volume of sold effort (e.g. lactate threshold work) and a peak of intensity (e.g. interval training). This is about health. High volume of exercise is damaging via oxidative stress and other ways. Weekly training volume is the most reliable predictor for injuries. If health and basic fitness is the goal, rather than bringing home the gold, you can add intensity to just a fairly small volume of moderate exercise, or perhaps even none at all, other than a warmup and cooldown.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 5d ago
    > Weekly training volume is the most reliable predictor for injuries. Yep! I tend to do too much (because I like exercising), so I have be deliberate about including light training and recovery days. Absolutely necessary for injury avoidance, and frankly overall health benefits.
- deleted 6d ago
  [deleted]
- shrubby 6d ago
  Exactly. I did this on purpose this spring. I had a shitty winter in terms of endurance and was pretty much starting from the gutter in February. Spring and early summer we're stressful so I did mostly Z1/LSD cycling in the form of extended commuting from work to home. Nothing excessive though as stress was plentiful. The estimated fitness or the Garmin estimate didn't budge much. Once vacation started I kept this on for few weeks to recover and after that added few harder sessions in a two week period. Few weeks after this I felt the change and Garmin also estimated 6 mil's of added VO2MAX in a week. Don't care about the metrics, but the added QOL from this and now I hopefully have a structure for the coming winter not to lose as much of this as the previous.
laptopdev 6d ago
second this
YZF 6d ago
HIIT can have a pretty quick impact on your VO2MAX but that is going to level off. As others have said you will want a more balanced routine in the long run. It is also possible you were over-training in your "moderate" intensity or conversely not increasing the load/distance enough. Training over years should result in good improvement even without HIIT. You will need to put a lot more time in.
- jandrewrogers 6d ago
  I have a pretty diverse training load these days. Hiking, mountaineering, running, plus a few sports and some resistance. While I have overtrained in the past on running in particular, it was mostly due to lack of diversity. Nonetheless, none of those things puts the same load on the body as HIIT. To be clear, I was objectively in good cardiovascular condition before adding HIIT. My resting heart rate has been in the 40s for years. The surprise was that there was so much easy margin left by adding HIIT to my regimen.
  - MrSkelter 6d ago
    If your heart rate has been in the 40s for years your cardiovascular system is at the peak of what’s possible. It’s not “pretty good”. A resting heart rate in the 30s is the kind of thing Olympic distance runners touch on. You are either exaggerating or your assessment of what’s normal is way off. Most very fit people have resting rates in the 50s and 60s.
    - jandrewrogers 5d ago
      I never implied my cardio fitness was poor, just that some metrics are relatively better than others. My RHR (currently 47-48 per various fitness trackers) has always been pretty elite. I don’t think about it and it doesn’t change much except in response to stress. I’m more interested in getting into the 90+ percentile range on the cardio metrics where I’m closer to the average. I don’t obsess over it, it is just interesting to see how different activities that I was going to do anyway move the needle.
    - 5d ago
lloeki 6d ago
That sounds exactly like what one should do for, say, couch to 10k: build a solid base in "zone 2" (low aerobic), which also serves not just as a cardio foundation but also builds the body's ability to withstand effort and impact. Then once the base is built, to make any progress one needs stronger, more focused stimulus, so you introduce interval training at high aerobic (tempo and threshold paces) as well as anaerobic (400-800 "very hard" sustained and all-out sprints) training, combined with a few zone 2 long runs. And then the cycle repeats: you have to let the body recover so deload, then start a new cycle. Nicklas Rossner has fantastic resources; there's a video there that explains how to find your current bottleneck: https://m.youtube.com/@NicklasRossnerPT https://m.youtube.com/@NicklasRossnerPT
- YZF 6d ago
  There's a lot of noise and confusion about what exactly "zone 2" is and why. But definitely longer easier (you're not out of breath) runs build a foundation in more ways than just your cardiovascular system. It's those other components that take a longer time to build. The key is that you are not over-training (watch your sleep and joint pain as an indicator) and can recover and that you are progressively increasing your load by lessay ~10% distance a week. Easy system would be 2 shorter runs and one longer run a week. There are plenty of online training program generators that are pretty good and will take you from zero to running 10k. I used an online program to run my first 10k somewhere circa 1990. There a lot of more cutting edge science online (and I follow Nick as well) but if you're not a competitive athlete and are just trying to get in better shape then the answer is mostly just do it. Over some base of running you can throw in some interval training including HIIT.
- jandrewrogers 6d ago
  I was running 10km 3x per week for a few years. When I started swapping some of those runs for HIIT, performance on the remaining 10km runs very noticeably improved in addition to the cardio metrics. To be clear, performance-maxxing was never the objective. I am in it for the health benefits and conditioning for grueling pursuits. Nonetheless, observable effects of different kinds of training on performance are still interesting to me and helps me optimize the time I spend on it.
- 6d ago
chubot 6d ago
What metrics were you tracking that moved?
bigcheeto 6d ago
You’d think more athletes and marathon runners would be living past 100. It’s always that lady who chilled all day who says laughter is how she lived so long!
- deleted 6d ago
  [deleted]
lofaszvanitt 6d ago
Your body gets used to the exercise. You have to constantly change it, otherwise you not gonna get the same thrill.

asdfman123 6d ago

You probably spent all that time training your cardiovascular base, which takes a long time to do. Then, you capped them off with anaerobic gains that were only possible with that prior work. For optimum gain you should mix moderate exercise with intense exercise, but the time you put in likely made your later success possible.

kazinator 6d ago
To be competitive in the sport, you need the pyramid method with the high volume base of light effort, middle of volume of sold effort (e.g. lactate threshold work) and a peak of intensity (e.g. interval training). This is about health. High volume of exercise is damaging via oxidative stress and other ways. Weekly training volume is the most reliable predictor for injuries. If health and basic fitness is the goal, rather than bringing home the gold, you can add intensity to just a fairly small volume of moderate exercise, or perhaps even none at all, other than a warmup and cooldown.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 5d ago
  > Weekly training volume is the most reliable predictor for injuries. Yep! I tend to do too much (because I like exercising), so I have be deliberate about including light training and recovery days. Absolutely necessary for injury avoidance, and frankly overall health benefits.
deleted 6d ago
[deleted]
shrubby 6d ago
Exactly. I did this on purpose this spring. I had a shitty winter in terms of endurance and was pretty much starting from the gutter in February. Spring and early summer we're stressful so I did mostly Z1/LSD cycling in the form of extended commuting from work to home. Nothing excessive though as stress was plentiful. The estimated fitness or the Garmin estimate didn't budge much. Once vacation started I kept this on for few weeks to recover and after that added few harder sessions in a two week period. Few weeks after this I felt the change and Garmin also estimated 6 mil's of added VO2MAX in a week. Don't care about the metrics, but the added QOL from this and now I hopefully have a structure for the coming winter not to lose as much of this as the previous.

laptopdev 6d ago

second this

YZF 6d ago

HIIT can have a pretty quick impact on your VO2MAX but that is going to level off. As others have said you will want a more balanced routine in the long run. It is also possible you were over-training in your "moderate" intensity or conversely not increasing the load/distance enough. Training over years should result in good improvement even without HIIT. You will need to put a lot more time in.

jandrewrogers 6d ago
I have a pretty diverse training load these days. Hiking, mountaineering, running, plus a few sports and some resistance. While I have overtrained in the past on running in particular, it was mostly due to lack of diversity. Nonetheless, none of those things puts the same load on the body as HIIT. To be clear, I was objectively in good cardiovascular condition before adding HIIT. My resting heart rate has been in the 40s for years. The surprise was that there was so much easy margin left by adding HIIT to my regimen.
- MrSkelter 6d ago
  If your heart rate has been in the 40s for years your cardiovascular system is at the peak of what’s possible. It’s not “pretty good”. A resting heart rate in the 30s is the kind of thing Olympic distance runners touch on. You are either exaggerating or your assessment of what’s normal is way off. Most very fit people have resting rates in the 50s and 60s.
  - jandrewrogers 5d ago
    I never implied my cardio fitness was poor, just that some metrics are relatively better than others. My RHR (currently 47-48 per various fitness trackers) has always been pretty elite. I don’t think about it and it doesn’t change much except in response to stress. I’m more interested in getting into the 90+ percentile range on the cardio metrics where I’m closer to the average. I don’t obsess over it, it is just interesting to see how different activities that I was going to do anyway move the needle.
  - 5d ago

lloeki 6d ago

That sounds exactly like what one should do for, say, couch to 10k: build a solid base in "zone 2" (low aerobic), which also serves not just as a cardio foundation but also builds the body's ability to withstand effort and impact. Then once the base is built, to make any progress one needs stronger, more focused stimulus, so you introduce interval training at high aerobic (tempo and threshold paces) as well as anaerobic (400-800 "very hard" sustained and all-out sprints) training, combined with a few zone 2 long runs. And then the cycle repeats: you have to let the body recover so deload, then start a new cycle. Nicklas Rossner has fantastic resources; there's a video there that explains how to find your current bottleneck: https://m.youtube.com/@NicklasRossnerPT https://m.youtube.com/@NicklasRossnerPT

YZF 6d ago
There's a lot of noise and confusion about what exactly "zone 2" is and why. But definitely longer easier (you're not out of breath) runs build a foundation in more ways than just your cardiovascular system. It's those other components that take a longer time to build. The key is that you are not over-training (watch your sleep and joint pain as an indicator) and can recover and that you are progressively increasing your load by lessay ~10% distance a week. Easy system would be 2 shorter runs and one longer run a week. There are plenty of online training program generators that are pretty good and will take you from zero to running 10k. I used an online program to run my first 10k somewhere circa 1990. There a lot of more cutting edge science online (and I follow Nick as well) but if you're not a competitive athlete and are just trying to get in better shape then the answer is mostly just do it. Over some base of running you can throw in some interval training including HIIT.
jandrewrogers 6d ago
I was running 10km 3x per week for a few years. When I started swapping some of those runs for HIIT, performance on the remaining 10km runs very noticeably improved in addition to the cardio metrics. To be clear, performance-maxxing was never the objective. I am in it for the health benefits and conditioning for grueling pursuits. Nonetheless, observable effects of different kinds of training on performance are still interesting to me and helps me optimize the time I spend on it.
6d ago

chubot 6d ago

What metrics were you tracking that moved?

bigcheeto 6d ago

You’d think more athletes and marathon runners would be living past 100. It’s always that lady who chilled all day who says laughter is how she lived so long!

deleted 6d ago
[deleted]

lofaszvanitt 6d ago

Your body gets used to the exercise. You have to constantly change it, otherwise you not gonna get the same thrill.