Which is better? Working out hard for less amount of time, or easy for a long amount of time?

Answer 1

No such thing as better.

There's a time and a place for everything. Some days are for track work, some days, long slow distance, some days tempo, some days just easy spinning to stay loose and taper for a race. You need some of all of them. The mix changes depending on what part of the season you're in.

LV, you can't go hard every day for very long without damaging something or burning out your adrenals. The Paul Bunyan method doesn't really work.

Answer 2

if you want results whether it an increase in strength, muscle or cardiovascular endurance or a decrease in body fat you have to constantly increase the intensity of exercise. the basically equates to being able to perform more "work" in the same amount of training time. with resistance training you constantly need to increase your training loads regardless if you are training for strength, muscle mass or endurance. if you don't want to increase muscle mass then limit your calories. muscles don't simply grow from heavy weight training there must be a caloric excess in the diet and there must be suffcient nutrients as well. with cardio you also need to increase the amount of work that you are performing in the same training time. to accomplish this you need to increase the distance traveled in the same amount of time. so if today you run 6 miles at level 5 in 30 minutes. the next cardio day the goal should be 6.1 miles at level 5 in 30 minutes, the next session 6.2, etc. this is how you force the body to adapt and become more efficient. this is also where the training logs comes in as it makes training easier. you simply look to see what you did the last workout and the goal today is to do more than the previous training session.

making continuous progress is all about intensity. if over the course of 6 months, a year etc. you have not made significant increases in strength, endurance, distance traveled with cardio, changes in the diet, etc. don't expect to see much change in your physique.

Answer 3

My philosophy is get in and get out quickly. I would rather workout hard for a short amount of time. I believe you will see better results this way, and results are what motivates us to keep working out.

Answer 4

Both have their benefits. There are two types of muscles and each workout style benefits them differently. The fast-twitch muscles are designed to generate a lot of force for short periods of time and so harder workouts over less time will benefit those more. The slow-twitch muscles are designed to generate less force over a much longer period of time so the easy workouts over long time will benefit those more.

Answer 5

depends on what you are trying to accomplish. if you want to "look" better, go heavier for shorter time. if you want to "feel" better go lighter for longer amount of time.