New to HIIT : Am I doing it right?

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strawterri
strawterri Posts: 13
edited October 2014 in Fitness and Exercise
Okay so today I started doing HIIT and I'm not really sure for how long I should be doing it but what I did was intervals with jumping jacks, butt kickers, squat jumps, and then proceeded into crunches, ab twists with weights, bicycles, more of the cardio, and then focused on my arms and repeated that for about 10 minutes but I'm thinking of doing 20-30 minutes of it. Would I still receive the same benefits if I split it up into 10 minutes each? Like 10 minutes solid and then taking a break for awhile and going back at it again?

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  • TJP_
    TJP_ Posts: 49 Member
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    That's more circuit training than true HIIT (the latter is very short bursts of real high intensity training followed by slightly longer rest - something like 20 seconds of sprints followed by 40 secs of jogging/walking repeated until you feel like you're going to die) but it sounds fine.

    Splitting it up in to 10 minutes blocks would be fine, just take rest as needed.
  • conoramck
    conoramck Posts: 49 Member
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    You could define HIIT as working to high intensity for short period of times and then taking a short rest in between sets and repeating. So say 45 - 60 second sprint as fast as you can go followed by a 30 second rest/walk and then repeat. Other examples are tabata intervals, hill sprints, punch out drills on the heavy bag. The example of the running I gave above could be substituted with any exercise like burpees, jump squats etc.

    If your looking for a good HIIT workout I would recommend insanity as long as you don't have any problems with your joints or whatever. You could even take a look at it to get an overall idea of HIIT workouts and what they are like.

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