Best HITT cardio

ericalillykristene

To blast fat? 30 min

SingingSingleTracker

ericalillykristene wrote: »

To blast fat? 30 min

There is no best HIIT cardio. Choose your weapon of choice: running with HIIT intervals; cycling with HIIT intervals; swimming with HIIT intervals; some odd machine at the gym with HIIT intervals; etc...

If you have a good base built up from doing lots of long cardio, you can dive in with higher heart rate zone intervals (Zone 4, and Zone 5 stuff). If you don't know your HR Zones (which you won't reach until the latter part of the interval anyway due to HR lag), then just use something like my handy dandy description:

1. Old lady pace
2. Chatty pace
3. Feel good hard
4. Feel bad hard
5. I am going to die
6. Flat out

Zone 4 is Lactate Threshold and are good for 10 - 30 minute intervals if you want to train in HIIT interval blocks.

Zone 5 is VO 2 Max stuff and is good for 3 - 8 minute intervals (tough to do more than 30-40 minutes of total work in this zone in one session). Consecutive days of this stuff is not desirable - even if it were possible. Best to be well rested going into a HIIT session targeting these.

Zone 6, or flat out, is only sustainable for 30 seconds to 3 minutes. Nobody usually attempts these on consecutive days.

From personal experience, I can say that a 30 minute HIIT session with Zone 5 intervals structured such that I do a brief warm up, then launch into 4 intervals at 4 minutes duration with a recovery of 3 minutes in Zone 1 or Zone 2 between is a very good burn. I feel about as worked after 30 minutes as I do after a 2 - 2 1/2 hour Zone 2 cardio session.

A 30 minute HIIT session in Zone 4 would be a brief warm up, then do 2 x 10; 2 x 12; or 2 x 15 minutes in Zone 4 with a 2 minute recovery between. Also a good burn, but not as life threatening as the Zone 5 work.