dfauteux

I consider myself to be in decent cardiovascular shape, been training for over a year and a half now and been doing cardio for most of that time. I have a resting heart rate of about 60. I was born with asthma and have never been able to grow out of it. I figured I would give HIIT cardio a shot since so many people say it is amazing.

I just started so the program said to start out at 4 min and go up a min every other workout. 30 sec med pace 30 sec as fast as you can go, repeat to 4 min, 5 min etc.

I was doing it on an eliptical trainer at 5 resistance, which on mine is pretty darn hard. But it seems my lungs feel like they want to blow up after only a few min of HIIT training. MY question is has anyone with asthma besides me done this? Should i keep it up or just do interval training on my recumbent bike for the 20 min program?

Squaggleboggin

I have asthma and I do terribly with cardio. I used to jog for about six minutes, adding about fifteen seconds each time, and I had an extremely rough time with it. I'd say that as long as you enjoy it or feel it's necessary to have in your routine, keep doing it. I don't think there are really any health risks to doing it because it will only strengthen your heart and lungs.

Push yourself. Enjoy yourself. Be yourself.
Knowledge is power. Obsessed with functional strength. Journal

dfauteux

I think that if I continue to do it, I am going to have to go slower then adding 1 min every 2 workouts. Sometimes it is better but sometimes my lungs feel like they are gonna blow. I can do 20 min following the interval training on my recumbant bike with no problems, get a good sweat going but no breathing problems. But the hiit training, well that is rough as heck. But I am gonna keep trying but I doubt I can really go full pin for the full 30 sec when I eventually get up to the 14 min he says to go to.

Squaggleboggin

Even if you have to slow down how quickly you move up (that's what I had to do too), just keep moving up slowly and steadily. Progress is progress, even if it isn't as fast as in an ideal situation. Keep on improving and sticking with it and it'll become easier. I simply didn't stick with jogging because I hated it. I only did it because of gym class when we had to do a 1/2 mile run thrice and see if we had improvements. That wasn't a good time to have asthma.

Push yourself. Enjoy yourself. Be yourself.
Knowledge is power. Obsessed with functional strength. Journal