Optimize your Heart, Increase your Performance

Why is HIIT a superior form of cardio?

Mac Peterson
Nov 6 · 2 min read

In honor of Men’s Health Month, I’m writing a series of articles dedicated to looking and feeling better — an area I feel is put on the back burner by a lot of men. In this article I’m going to talk about the way you workout, and how it can significantly impact your cardiovascular performance.

When choosing which form of cardio I aim to torture myself with, I often settle with running. It’s easy to do without equipment, so anyone can do it. But, after running for an extended period of time for a couple of months, I felt like my time could be used better elsewhere…


That’s when I heard about Ejection Fraction.

Ejection fraction is the rate of power of your heartbeat, or the volume of blood that each heart beat pumps out. Experienced athletes have lower resting heart rates, and unhealthy adults have much higher heart rates. This is a great measure of your overall health, and there’s a way to improve it and operate at a lower resting heart rate (and no — you don’t have to go take up free diving to learn, although this is a great method).

So, how can you improve your heart’s efficiency at pumping blood?


HIIT

The secret lies in the intensity and duration of your cardio workouts. You may have heard the term “HIIT — High Intensity Interval Training.” Honestly, it’s a bit of a buzzword in the fitness community… but there is some science behind it!

For HIIT You’ll want to go as close to 100% of your potential power and speed as you can (read: Go Hard), for about 40 seconds, and then you’ll rest for 20 seconds. Repeat this 5 times, and you’re done with cardio for the day — in 5 minutes, too!

What’s absolutely CRAZY about this style of cardio is that you only need to do this 1–3 times per week in order to increase your heart’s efficiency by a factor of 12–15%! And this is all while doing cardio for about 10% of the time you would otherwise…

Save time, perform better. Seems like a no-brainer to me. At the end of the day, whatever cardio you decide to do — The couch is the killer.


Mac Peterson

Written by

Biohacking, Health, and Lifestyle Writer. Upgrading My Quality of Life Through Changes to Mind, Body, and Soul.