I’ve heard a few times that for untrained people conditioning is not recommended immediately. At what point is it a good idea to add in one day per week? I am 8 weeks into my novice LP. All lifts have gone up considerably, and my waist (and weight) are still much higher than I’d like. I’m 6’1" 243 with a 42.5" waist. Starting point for diet (not weights) was 10-12 weeks ago. 258 and 46" waist.
Making good progress, but I know my conditioning is terrible, and I have a concept 2 rower just sitting there (primarily used for warming up and cooling down).
Not sure if I’m recalling correctly; but I feel like reading through your previous forum responses on the SS boards that a recommendation for 1 then 2 HIIT sessions/week was the more common recommendation for adding conditioning. I feel like I’m now more often seeing the recommendation for LISS when the question of added conditioning comes up.
Am I imagining things or have your thoughts on this changed in the past year or so? Why the change if so?
The “unique” benefits of HIIT over LISS have likely been overstated, and additionally there is probably a higher fatigue cost to doing a sufficient number of very high intensity intervals, whereas in our context of wanting to improve conditioning for health purposes, body composition purposes, and for training/work capacity purposes, maximizing the amount of recoverable training volume in a given week is generally a good idea. So we like to use both, depending on context. Some folks who are starting out very obese and/or deconditioned can’t really mount a true maximal effort in the setting of HIIT conditioning, either.
I’ll chime in that I’ve been walking for LISS, and it was pretty worthless simply b/c walking is too easy. If I really walked as fast I could to get my heart rate in the LISS zone, it wound up being a bit too much work on my calves and hip flexors. I also had no HITT option since I workout at home. I bought an airbike a while back, and for a few weeks now have been doing 1 session of 30 minute LISS on the airbike, and it’s very easy to hit my target heart rate for LISS. The effort is better dispersed over the entire body since the arms and legs are involved, so it’s not very taxing. I also started doing a 2nd session each week HITT style. I began with 7 rounds of 20 seconds on and 100 seconds off, and have been slowly adding 1 additional round each week until I get to 15. I’m currently at 11 rounds.
My conditioning has skyrocketed since getting the airbike and following this diligently. I think the HITT is largely responsible since it really gets my heart rate up high, and then goes back down before the next round begins. Little activities around the house, or walking up a flight of stairs, are much easier and less noticeable. I wish I would have bought the airbike a year ago. I can only imagine how much better it’ll get in another month or two after I get to 15 rounds.
Yeah, I should get the Rogue air bike this Thursday. Looking forward to it. I have a C2 rower that I use too (primarily for warm ups and cool downstairs), and recently bought a Polar H10 to pair up to both machines to stay in the 60-70% zone for LISS. I did one conditioning workout with it, and it’s great to have a metric in front of you in order to stick with a pace. I know the air bike will take very little effort to reach 60-70%. I plan on using it for intervals (HIIT) when I can handle the recovery mentioned above by Austin .