Scoped subreddit lists for the content pipeline's research mode. Broad keyword searches across all of Reddit come back noisy — fitness terms pull in supplement spam, gym-selfie subs and product marketing — so scope every follow-up to these.
| Subreddit | Why |
|---|---|
| r/hiit | The topic itself; small but every thread is on-subject |
| r/fitness | The largest general audience; daily simple-questions threads are goldmines for real confusion |
| r/xxfitness | Women's fitness, far more specific about programming and recovery than r/fitness |
| r/bodyweightfitness | Home/no-equipment audience, which maps to a large share of our posts |
| r/tabata | Small, protocol-specific |
| r/crossfit | EMOM/AMRAP vocabulary and timer use is native here |
| Subreddit | Why |
|---|---|
| r/running | Sprint intervals, track workouts, treadmill sessions |
| r/cycling and r/Velo | Structured interval training with power zones |
| r/loseit | Fat-loss intent, which is the commonest reason people search HIIT |
| r/homegym | Equipment constraints, apartment noise, small-space workouts |
| r/AppleWatch | Timer and wearable friction — direct product-feature signal |
| r/Garmin | Same, for the other half of the wearable market |
| r/askfitness and r/fitness30plus | Age-specific and beginner questions phrased the way people search |
A thread with high comment counts asking the SAME question repeatedly is worth more than a high-upvote thread that is just a progress photo. What we want is the phrasing people use when confused, not the content that performs socially.
Then filter it through the app lane. On 2026-08-23 commit 5e9fc2b deleted 89 posts of generic fitness editorial that Google indexed at 4%, against 71% for posts about timers, interval formats, named competitors and building specific workouts. A strong Reddit thread about sleep or macros is still a bad post for this blog. Take the pain and find its app-lane expression, or discard it.
Product friction posts (timer stopped mid-workout, watch app drained battery, cannot get intervals set up quickly) are the strongest signal of all, because they are the intersection of a search query and a reason to install the app — and they are natively in the lane.