HIIT – What’s That?

I’ll bet you’ve heard people talking about HIIT. No? You haven’t? Have you been living under a rock? Well, maybe not. I have to admit that up to about a couple of years ago I had no idea what the heck it was. It stands for “High Intensity Interval Training”. This means you put a whole bunch more intensity into your regular Interval Training workout. It’s now one of the ways I get my cardio dose, and I’m loathe to admit this too: I hate it. Well, I love it. Ok, I love to hate it.

Why do I hate it? Because it’s HARD!!

Why do I love it? Because it WORKS!!

I’ve never experienced such gains in strength and stamina as when I’m training regularly using High Intensity Interval Training. So, if my opinion means anything, I highly, (repeat: HIGHLY) recommend it.

One of the ways you can increase the intensity in your own Interval Training is to work as HARD AS YOU CAN during the ‘difficult’ interval STAGE and make sure your active recovery stage is not slacking (ie, you march with real purpose during the walking of a sprint/walk interval session, rather than ‘strolling’… heck, why don’t you do a light jog during your ‘recovery’ stage?). Make sure you understand though, that the recovery (aka: lower intensity) stage is meant to let you RECOVER so you can go as hard as you can on the next ‘work’ interval. If you find that light jogging is not getting your heart rate down enough for proper recovery, then take it down a notch and march with purpose instead. You MUST recover in order to crank out that next work interval. Got it? Good! Let’s move on.

Hillsprints is one of the best ways to crank up the intensity. Just sprint up the hill and march down over and over again. I get to my favorite hill by doing a light jog then in order to get to the top, I sprint as hard as I can to get there. At the top, I turn around and walk back down (no stopping to breathe or look around, just keep moving, moving, all the time moving), and at the bottom give it everything I’ve got to get to the top again. Trust me, every time you get to the top of the hill you just want to die or puke. But by the time you get to the bottom of the hill, if you concentrate on getting your breathing even as you walk, you’ll feel ready to do another sprint. I do this for 20 minutes then run home. This usually totals 40 minutes of constant movement. It’s a great workout… Yes, I hate every minute of it while I’m doing it but it’s a masochistic kind of hate… it hurts but I love it for what it’s doing for me in the long term.

I dare you to try it and learn to love/hate it like I do!

For more info about cool workout techniques check out The Fat Burning Furnace Case Study