Is Interval Training Necessary? It Depends.

Received the following question from a blog reader-

PJ:

Love the blog man. As a self employed husband and father of 3, your information has helped me immensely in regards to getting in time efficient and effective workouts. My question is this: my primary goal is just to continue to get stronger. Thanks to your no BS approach to nutrition, I've really gotten my diet in line and lost a lot of body fat over the last 6 months. I'm happy with my level of leanness, and found just keeping my calorie intake at or below a certain level (while keeping the protein intake plenty high) does the trick. So, I really just want to focus on getting stronger while maintaining my level of body fat and weight. This being said, I don't want to neglect my heart health either...but I'm not really interested in getting in extreme condition...it's just not one of my primary goals at this point. I know you are a big interval training advocate, but do I really need to do it, given my goals? Thanks in advance.

Jeff from North Dakota

Jeff:

Very good question, and, actually, you pretty much answered it for yourself. BASED ON YOUR GOALS, no, I don't think you need interval training. I think traditional cardiovascular work, for 30 minutes, 3 times per week, at about 70% of max heart rate, will do just fine. The one thing you have to be careful with in regards to interval training is, if you are really trying to get stronger, it can delay or stop progress altogether. It is demanding, and makes recovering from strength training workouts much more difficult. Can you MAINTAIN strength and do hard interval work multiple times weekly? Sure. BUT, trying to get stronger while hitting hard intervals 2-3 days/week is usually going to lead to compromised results. I hear people talk all the time about how moderate intensity cardio can impede recovery from strength workouts and make gaining strength and muscle difficult, but I completely disagree: too much high intensity interval work is the real progress killer when it comes to gaining strength and muscle.

Now, if you would have told me your primary goal was fat loss or getting in stellar performance condition, I would have told you, yes, you do need to include interval work. However, as you stated, your goals are far different. Keep in mind you can't OPTIMALLY enhance more than 1 or 2 fitness related qualities at the same time. However, you can try to enhance one quality (strength in your case), and maintain the others through smart programming (which it sounds like you are doing). All too often, I see people trying to increase strength and size, decrease body fat, eat in a caloric deficit, and run a 5:00 mile all at the same time. This is a recipe for disaster.

Some methods work very well for achieving certain goals or enhancing certain fitness related qualities, but don't work so well when trying to improve other qualities. The key thing, which you've done, is to identify what is important at this point: this is something most people NEVER do. Once you've identified what you are trying to optimize, choose the methods which work the best for achieving the goal. If you want to maintain other qualities, choose methods which will allow you to do so, BUT METHODS WHICH DON'T COMPROMISE THE MAIN OBJECTIVE. Sounds to me like you've already intuitively done this. Good luck on your quest for strength.