I've only recently changed my indoor cardio habits in the sense that I no longer strive to get HR up to above the anaerobic threshold viz. where I get out of breath, which is @ 160bpm for me (max HR being approx. 175).
The one I enjoy most is to start at a leisurely pace on the treadmill and then bring up incline to 15% and speed up to where I almost need to jog. This generally = anaerobic threshold. No intervals actually.
One of the reasons is that I'd get scary episodes of blurry eye vision when I used to do HIIT. Lack of glucose for the eyes I assume? Also, I'd get crazy carb/food cravings following HIIT and would overcompensate.
Yet, ramping up speed in a linear way can also be more demanding than you'd think. For a while I'd have the goal to spend e.g. 5 minutes very close to the anaerobic threshold but again, burnt out on that quickly. Actually this very method, when done on an indoor bicycle which shows Watt output and allows you to pace it at a given # of Watts is called the Conconi test. Used to determine anaerobic threshold & so on.
I've become much better at doing cooling downs lately. Used to stop with a mere 1 min cooldown. I've been told I'm having slight heart valve leakage/murmur and apparently it's better to allow your heart to return to a more normal HR. The most risk on heart failure is right after strenuous efforts without a proper cooldown. I do wonder if that's why it takes so long before HR returns back to a slower rate.
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