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HIIT is Good for Your Heart

By on November 21, 2012

I LOVE HIIT HIIT is Good for Your Heart

For decades, doctors have been telling their obese & out-of-shape patients that they need to do long, slow & boring cardio workouts if they want to lose weight and get healthy.

Luckily, science is finally catching up to the awesome health-improving aspects of HIIT workouts.

In a study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers concluded that a 6 week program of both moderate (10 s work : 20 s rest) and heavy (30 s work : 60 s rest) intensity interval training…

  • Reduced Carotid Arterial Stiffness in both groups
  • Improved Heart Rate Dynamics in both groups
  • Improved VO2 Max in the HEDIT group only
  • Improved Lactate Threshold in both groups

hiit stats HIIT is Good for Your Heart

Conclusions

  1. HIIT workouts are good for your heart
  2. This study is only scratching the surface of HIIT research. Besides the limitations of such a small study, the conclusions probably raise more questions than they answer – but since that’s the nature of good science, I am cool with that.
  3. The researchers believe that the HEDIT group (30 s work : 60 s rest) saw improvements due to “mitochondrial biogenesis while the MEDIT (10 s work : 20 s rest) duty cycle induced a vascular stimulus, but had little impact on mitochondrial proliferation”.

Reference

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Doug Robb is a personal trainer, a fitness blogger and author, a competitive athlete, and a student of nutrition and exercise science. Since 2008, Doug has expanded his impact by bringing his real-world experience online via his health & fitness blog, Health Habits. Read more posts by Doug at Hive Health Media.
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