I agree wholeheartedly with Kathryn here. And with Cathe herself. Constant HIIT could be a fast track to injury in my personal opinion and, what counts for even more, personal experience.
I disagree that you have to always feel like your eyes are popping out of your head with intensity, intensity, intensity for the workout to be doing you any good at all. Some days you want to gun it, some days you don't and some days your body will not comply, whatever your mind's desire may be. Any woman who menstruates will know this for sure: there are days in the month when your energy peaks and days when it takes a nose dive. Fact. So, you are doing yourself a disservice trying to gun it with HIIT when your body will not comply and a bad mood or worse, injury, could be the result of this.
I also disagree with the statement that there is no point in running 6 miles at a slower pace, or doing whatever cardio activity you are embarked on at a slower pace. On the contrary, there is all the point in the world. Any athlete in training, and especially a runner, will tell you that there are days when you take the pace down because your objectives are to increase endurance. The only way to run longer is to do exactly that, and it require running at a slower pace rather than going all out which would tire you within half an hour and leave you with no energy stores to go that 10 or 12 mile distance which you have set up for yourself as your current challenge. You do not have to be a runner for this philosophy of training to make sense for you.
Slower pace does not equal "half-assed." No-one on these boards who decides to vary the intensity of their workouts should be made to feel inadequate by such statements. Not everyone's objective in maintaining a regular exercise programme is body building (high weights, low cardio), and what works for one person, of a particular gender and age, may not work for another.
Nor does everyone work out for weight loss. We all derive enjoyment and benefit from our workouts in different ways. For some IMAX is a delight, for others it is a torture they agree to put themselves through once a week for the sake of improved cardiovascular conditioning. For such people, Rythmic Step, with its lower intensity, is way more fun and beneficial because sometimes you just want to lose yourself in the music, because it peps up your spirit and unlike counting seconds in HIIT (how much longer?.....) you don't have to think about it and therefore exercise can be a stress reliever. Exercise when you can switch the mind off is an incredibly valuable thing for many harried, over-stressed individuals juggling family and work. So, I would never want to take lower intensity workouts out of my exercise programme, never. HIIT has its place, but not every day.
If you love HIIT, good for you. But no-one should be made to feel that it is the only way to train and be healthy.
If you want improved health, great cardiovascular conditioning, to bust stress, have fun, and avoid injury, lower intensity training, along with HIIT, has a place in your fitness programme. As the original poster said: compromise, balance.
Clare
...Carole