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Most articles I've read about HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) focus on it's ability to get you leaner without wasting muscle. But what I'd like to know is whether or not HIIT is as good as traditional LSD (Long Slow Distance) cardio for training the cardiovascular system, and does it provide the same benefits (lower resting heart rate, decreased blood pressure, ect).

That is an excellent question. In short no. It does however, increase lung capacity and it increaes the ability of the heart to respond to short term maximal effort. It will help you expend more energy in maximal type effort for short periods of time. In short it helps your sprints. These are good things. However you do need endurance training for your heart and lungs. A minimum session is 20 continuous minutes. This must be done at least once a week to maintain the health of these organs. Since these organs function continuously, endurance exercise is what really keeps them in shape for their primary job. Now obviously if you are a distance runner or other type of endurance athlete you need more. If you are a short distance sprinter, you're better off doing HIIT with minimal cardio. For a person who wants to get into shape more quickly, more could be better. However for a person just wanting to maintain helath the single 20 minute session once a week is enough. Then you can use anaerobic exercise like HIIT and weight lifting for fat loss.

Keep in mind you need to be in good cardiovascular shape to do HIIT. HIIT is not for people who are out of shape. People can get in shape by doing cardio for a few weeks first.

I don't like to do cardio, but I do it every Saturday without fail to keep in shape.

i do 45 mins of HIIT every day, i find resting heart rate dropped HUGE

and i do it with the program on the machine, couple min warm up, then spikes up for 30 seconds or so, then down to a jog then spike even higher then low then spikes highest then low then highest then low you get my picture :P

I have to disagree here. The beauty of HIIT is that it improves both your aerobic and anaerobic capacity. Think 'Tabata' This does not mean that there is no place for steady rate cardio.

You can scale HIIT to fit anyone's needs. Someone that's 'out of shape' can start by alternating walking and jogging and slowly build up to jogging/sprinting.

I think you guys might have confused HIIT with aerobic intervals. John if you can do 45 minutes of HIIT, you should be in the olympics.

HIIT is a max effort sprint. If you just go higher effort, lower effort with longer intervals that is aerobic intervals.

George in your example of starting the unfit person out with walk/job, that is then cardio type intervals. Which fits in perfectly with what I said about getting into good cardiovascular shape. It is true that aerobic intervals are a little better then standard cardio.

Without difinitive research I still think it is a good idea to do some cardio, weather it be intervals or standard. The role of HIIT outside of training sprinters is fairly new.

Jeff Galloway - perhaps the preeminent writer on running - recommends an aerobic protocol of two 30-minute sessions and one long session of aerobic exercise per week. Building cardio endurance seems to be independent of building speed, although increases in one form of aerobic fitness will help develop the other.

Seems that a good strategy is to develop both, but not excessively if you're trying to increase muscle mass.

oh trust me its 30 seconds of intense activity followed by 30 seconds of recovery time over and over again, and i do 45 mins of it and i feel totally exhausted, but i bounce back in about 10 mins

now if going all out for 30 seconds and then slowing down for 30 over and over isnt HIIT then what is HIIT?

i should add by the end of the 30 seconds ifeel like im dead and then i recovery during the lull

oh and here is some proof from this very website

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
5 minute warm-up at 50% HRR
Short-interval work
Initially 10 and later 15 bouts
15 seconds increasing to 30 seconds
Long-interval
4 to 5 bouts
60 seconds increasing to 90 seconds
Bouts separated by recovery periods allowing heart rate to return to 120 to 130 bpm
Creatine phosphate recovery may take 4 minutes to replete beteem maximal bouts

thats exactly what i do, theres two different kinds of bikes at my gym one does short 30 seconds intervals and the other does longer 60-90 second intervals its still high intensity interval training and trust me its not a walk in the park at the end of the high peak intervals your legs are aching and your breathing really hard and sweating like crazy, but i love it, mabye im twisted :P

The only way to really tell is if you can figure out what your heart rate is during the sprints. Personally, I think you're not sprinting hard enough. Please realize that we're not trying to make fun of you, just trying to have a discussion. 45 mintues is 90 intervals. Most people start with 4 intervals and add an interval every second time they do it. So you can see how these two things don't really add up.

No matter what we say, John, you should do what feels right for you, but we're also in the business of giving good advice to other people.

my heart rate goes way up duringthe intervals and hten down to the 130-140 range during the lulls, and im telling you i do 45 mins of this

5 min warm up, 5 min cool down , it doesnt start at lull to highest level sprint it builds up like i described before, warm up>small sprint>lull>bigger sprint>lull > biggest sprint> lull

thats how it goes, the one bike repeats the biggest sprint>lull 3 times then the 5 min cool down starts

on the other bike with shorter sprints it just does that first cycle over and over again until the time limit hits

oh and by way up i mean im in the 155-165 range when im sprinting full tilt

John

Has all the HIIT that you've been doing had any impact on your weight training?

my quads/hams/calves are huge and rock hard, when i was doing 3 full body workouts and HIIT every day my legs would get burned out by the end of the week cause EVERY day i was working my legs some how, now that im on an upper lower split its much better

If that is true, it is beyond impressive. I can't do anywhere near that. I haven't been doing it very long though. I have also only been sticking to it religously for a couple weeks now. It is hard to hit the gym every day, but that is what it is after adding HIIT. I have my 3 day bodybuilding split, 1 day of cardio and 3 days of HIIT. I'd be thrilled if I could get a full 15 in. As it is I am only up to 7 sets and I have to extend the last couple jogging sets to get that much. After I have cooled down I feel like I could do a coulpe more, but right after I finish number 7, I feel like I am going to die.