It is good that you have validated the theory for yourself. I think it is pretty well-established science by now, here is one meta-analysis study I found in the BMJ.

https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/53/10/655


Rich.

I guess I just wasn't "into it" enough to think it really applied to me a whole lot. But seeing is believing.

I was investing in the aerobic engine while I've had some good hours to spend and I've always had a low aerobic contribution to my VO2.

It'll pay off. Just from long mental battles to short ones instead. It's amazing how long 2 or 3 minutes can seem.

It took me trying out TT at longer than little short 6 or 7 mile efforts to realize my aerobic engine sucked. Try doing an hour effort and the % difference from your 20min and 8min power is appalling.........it's time to work.

What does the plot of kj/cal look like? Do you track intake?

Thanks for sharing; although I haven’t tracked in the same level of detail you have, I’ve been doing a lot of indoor rowing the last few months and has similar results...especially when I focus on the interval based stuff over the long pieces of 5 or 10km.

Might be time to start plotting things out and see if I come up with the same sort of correlation you’ve discovered.

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Asterisk
https://bjsm.bmj.com/...ts-2018-099928eoc1.1

What are you defining as HIIT? 2-3 minutes sounds way long, like a standard VO2 interval. HIIT would be more like 20-30 seconds of near all-out.

not trying to play devil's advocate but MA can be very subjective

Ummm, sorry but you need to BUY A SCALE. You have zero weight data and you can NOT just say "I know what I weigh." That is total BS science.



Basically I've been geeking and manually tracking TSS/TSB/CTL/ATL all by separate training zone for a while to get some trends for myself.

The aerobic work has been great to fill a gap that was proven in the data and proving out on the road.

However, weight has gone up on an equal diet each time the "HIIT" has gone down in Z5/6 on the data and the Z4 has gone up. Almost like clockwork.

So, for me at least, the whole "hiit for lower weight and metabolism" seems to actually work out as something I can actually correlate to data. I don't have a logging scale, but I KNOW what I weigh during different training phases.

In the photo, the top is z1/z2 with z1 in red. The middle is z3/z4 with z4 in red (working on making z4 the focuse and not z3 per se). The bottom is z5/z6 with z6 in red.

During the "hiit" phases where you see the red peaks on the z5/6 chart I can attest to having my lowest weight while routinely probably eating more than I eat now, despite overall less KJ burn per week. In the big Z2 peaks earlier with the modest z4 bump, more weight on equal or even less food. Most recently to the right, the huge z4 bump and trend.......weight up despite equal or less food again.

So, for me.........the hiit DOES correlate with weight and metabolism. Just fun to look at.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Technically, he's giving an anecdote, not doing science.

I thought of that angle but he goes through this whole presentation of his data with multiple graphs with all the diff colored lines and such, yet for his central claim, he actually has zero data, zilch, nada. Not very instructive even as an anecdote IMO.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Based on your experience, how do you mix up / vary your training? There's periodization where you do base for a long period, intervals for a shorter period and recovery for racing. Then there's mixing it up year round. What's working for you - HIIT, polarization, etc.?

Also do you train differently for swim, bike, run? In other words, by the time I get to the run, LSD seems to be the safest approach.

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Indoor Triathlete - I thought I was right, until I realized I was wrong.

Most people can't give you anything. They just say, totally anecdotally, that they think it works.

Even people who do have some workout data.......probably don't or can't track it separately by zone to a level of CTL. They're probably able to graph hours.

Trainingpeaks performance manager charts gives you duration by zone over time. Not CTL. Strava, forget it.

In my other topic, I talked about wanting to weight my TSS/CTL/ATL by zone. Give z1/2 the least weighting. 3/4 more. And 5/6 the most. I guessed and checked at the weighting by seeing how different zones and durations affected TSS to work out backwards some usable weighting.

To me, hours is very subjective when looking at zones 5/6 because you're working at a minutes level in 5/6 per workout. Like, maybe up to 20 or so per workout? Whereas zones 1/2 you're looking at hours. You can't meaningfully put those on the same chart and decipher anything across the zones. The scales of time are different.

It makes it easier to provide a relative comparison if it is weighted, in my opinion. Then you can plot the two together.

Until I hit that Z4 focus, I'd average 155 +/-2 every time I weighed. After being into it for a while (and diet staying close) it drifted up to 158 +/- 2 every time I weighed. I could weigh scale at home or the doctor scale in the gym and notice the same 3 lb delta.

I'm not going to get into Velotron level science here. Just giving what I do have.

If someone wants to buy me a smart scale you can pair to a service.......by all means go right ahead.

You don't need a logging scale to record and track your weight. Just record it in a spreadsheet.

You've presented nothing showing a significant correlation between hiit and weight. We'll leave the discussion about a causal relationship for another day.