The myth of interval training being better

With our digital age and the growing number of fitness influencer that exist for profit, new material has to be generated in order for these people to remain relevant and they are obligated to continually have new content or they will fade away.

In my mind I would be happy if people would just show us workout ideas with videos of them performing the exercises properly, but the crazy world of the supplement industry kind of enforces that they do something a bit more fresh. This is all fine and dandy until they start convincing their audiences that there is only one "correct" way to train on weights and also, real studies that aren't trying to sell you any bogus supplements can disprove these claims in an instant but nobody reads them because they are long and boring because they are written in "doctor talk."

The average consumer these days has the attention span of a goldfish and the influencers are aware of this. Therefore they limit their instructional videos to the length of a TikTock video in order to get the message out very quickly. One of these things I see a lot is that traditional lifting is inferior to high-speed interval training.

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I have no problem with HIIT or interval training... I have no problem with ANY sort of training provided it isn't something useless or with bad form that is going to lead to spinal or joint problems because of the execution. What I do have a problem with is people lying to their audience and trying to convince them that there is only ONE way of achieving the look that the person is talking about and of course, normally they will hide this behind a paywall to the tune of something absurd like $50 per workout.

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Another problem I have with it and even celebrities have jumped on board this train is when they try to pretend that only they have the secrets to why it is that someone like Chris Hemsworth can get into Thor shape and other people cannot. I already know the secret to this and it isn't in his videos... It's called steroids and other PED's.

Let's stay on topic here though. This myth that HIIT is somehow superior to traditional weight-lifting sets is pure nonsense and any advice that you hear to this end should be ignored especially if the person happens to be selling the workouts or supplements along with it. It's all a ruse to get you to exercise opening your wallet.

Real scientific studies involving double-blinds as well as hundreds or even thousands of test subjects have all come to the same conclusion of that muscle growth is determined by the achieving exhaustion inside of those muscle tissues. Then the diet comes into place in order to "heal" those muscles with increased levels of protein. How you get that protein is up to you of course.

If you want to take 10 minute breaks between sets and have the time to do it, as long as you work the muscle group to the point of failure the results are going to be the same than if you did them all in a "GO GO GO GO!" speed trials that is standard with HIIT.

Interval training can have wonderful benefits for people who don't have a lot of time to get to the gym but this notion that it is somehow superior to traditional lifting is all bunk. I will admit there are cardiovascular benefits to interval training that isn't likely to occur with long breaks between sets in traditional lifting, but if the goal is muscle gain, the only thing that matters is achieving muscle failure on the last rep.

If you are pressed for time then interval training might be the right way to go for you especially if you have access to a relatively empty gym during certain times of day. This brings about another aspect of HIIT and I have encountered this in my own public gym and that is certain people believe it is their "right" to occupy multiple machines during their intervals and will become upset if someone slides in the middle interrupting their sets.

There is no ONE WAY to muscle growth and a lot of it depends on diet. The fact of the matter is that these charlatans is that they are intentionally misleading their audience in order to financially benefit themselves. This has been seen time and time again in various influencers who get busted not actually following their own routines and instead being loaded up with $10,000 worth of PED's.

Just know that if you are working out at all, you are already doing your health and body a great benefit and you don't necessarily need to tweak your workout to be exactly like some guy on YouTube that is probably on PED's anyway.