Today's blog will be based around high intensity interval training (HIIT). A lot of the fitness community have heard about HIIT but still very little people use it on a regular basis. The two most common reasons being preferring low intensity steady state (LISS) training or just not having the motivation to work extremely hard for a minimum of 10 minutes. A lot of people have this idea that you only need or do HIIT when dieting or trying to drop a few kilograms. But this is far from the truth!! There is a huge importance for high intensity exercise on the body especially the heart.
While some see HIIT and normal cardio as too much effort and that it may effect their strength, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. Well there are no negatives! Listed below are some of the key benefits of HIIT, all of which are facts and have come from non sponsored research articles.
- Increase Heart Health
- Increase Blood Flow
- Increase Productivity
- Reduce Resting Heart Rate
All these benefits lead into better mobility, flexibility, muscle growth, muscle recovery and so on. Alongside this, a brilliant thing about HIIT is the wide range of exercises and equipment you can use and even better than this, you can be finished within 10-15 minutes. There are many types of HIIT training making it easier to adapt depending on what you want to do. It is all done on time, reps or calories! These variations are listed below.
TIME:
When doing HIIT for time you can separate it into either interval or a clock countdown. If breaking it down to intervals, you can make it as easy or as hard as possible. You can do 20 seconds work with 20 seconds rest, 45 seconds work with 15 seconds rest and so on. The higher the rest to work ratio is, the easier it becomes. Or you can do the clock countdown variation where you set a 15 minute timer (or more or less) and you try to do as much as possible in that time. This variation means you take rest when you need it and can rest for shorter or longer throughout the workout depending on how fatigued you are.
REPS:
Recently training to certain reps during HIIT has become very common especially within CrossFit now. An example of training to repetitions is doing 50 body weight squats into 50 kettle bell swings. This can be broken down into smaller options for example 10 squats into 10 swings and keep repeating till you hit the 50.
CALORIES:
This can be done on any type of cardiovascular equipment as long as it has a calorie counter. Most commonly done on a Bike, Rower, Skierg, Air Bike or Treadmill. The idea is to hit the calorie target as quick as possible and then keep repeating. For example doing 15 calories on the air bike then rest and repeat 5 times.
This week we will be making our first training video that will interlink with HIIT as it will show examples and correct form on some different pieces of equipment. This will fall into the resources page.
Thanks again,
The Fitness Mill Team