Low-intensity interval training can be as effective as HIIT – but only if you spend more time working out

• HIIT( high-intensity interval training) promises to improve overall health and fitness and it can also be done in a short amount of time.
• It requires you to work hard for short periods of 30-45 seconds, infused with recovery periods of 5 minutes, repeated approximately 2-4 times.
• It can even be done by people of all ages and by those with chronic health conditions, like diabetes.

• Though HIIT might sound easy, those 25-30 seconds can feel like they last forever if you’re exercising as hard as you can. Thus, HIIT might not be appropriate for everyone.
• Some ill people may feel faint, and very rarely pass out. While the benefits still outweigh the risks for most people, HIIT has also been linked to greater risk of injury.

This is a new exercise phenomenon that claims you can still achieve similar fitness results to HIIT, but with lower risk of injury.

Though there is currently no research on the effects of LIIT workouts, the idea is that you still perform exercises in intervals, but these exercises are done at a lower intensity and with more shorter rest time in between.

... but we can look at studies which have compared the effects of doing the same amount of exercise, but over different periods of time.

Both long, slow endurance training (walking or running) and HIIT have been found to improve heart and lung function in healthy adults. Though HIIT typically leads to larger increases in aerobic fitness, both high- and low-intensity training can be beneficial to heart health.

If you simply replace a brief HIIT session with one of a lower intensity, then it probably won’t be more effective, unless the session is longer in order to make up for the loss of intensity.

So if your usual HIIT session is 10-15 minutes long, an equivalent LIIT session might need to be 30 minutes to be as effective.– and a continuous jogging session could be 60 minutes.