Identify HIIT workout.

willing2try

What is an HIIT workout ??

cwolfman13

Most of what is marketed as HIIT isn't really HIIT, it's just interval training, which is fine and has it's own benefits. True HIIT requires a person to already have a substantial aerobic base as it puts an incredible stress on the body. True HIIT is working at about 90% of fully capacity for brief stints of 10-15 seconds with longer rest in between those sets. A session typically lasts 5-10 minutes. It is mostly done by elite level athletes and used sparingly...one or two sessions per week tops.

NorthCascades

High Intensity Interval Training is a type of workout that involves exercising basically as hard as you're capable of for very short bursts, typically 10 to 30 second, and then recovering for slightly longer amounts of time. The entire workout can last up to about 20 minutes; beyond that the athlete is too exhausted to continue. Main benefits are building anaerobic capacity and slightly faster recovery. It's useful when preparing for a race, but of limited usefulness outside of that context.

heybales

I'll also add that much of what is marketed as HIIT couldn't be done non-HIIT.
Many of the workouts are by nature done as intervals as you couldn't do it sustained anyway.
How long is someone going to be doing pushups anyway, or pullups.
Is lifting HIIT because you can only do so many reps, and then must rest, before doing it again?
No.

You do interval training on something that wouldn't require it, as a means of improving some aspect of it.
So that means cardio.

There's also plain Interval Training. Runners' coaches have various methods of this.
There's also Short Interval Training (SIT) with short like 30 sec max-intensity and longer like 4 min recovery intervals. That can be longer sessions with that long of a rest.
Then HIIT I've normally seen given as that 15-45 sec (depending on ability) with rest 3x as long, which is still pretty short. So as stated the whole session is short.
Then Tabata is like opposite but a form of HIIT - 20 sec hard, 10 sec recovery, after 8 bouts 1 min rest, 4 of those for 20 min.
I'd love to see speed or pace or HR on the last hard interval compared to the first one.
I know on HIIT even with longer rest performance takes a nosedive.

It would be like lifting with short rests between sets - you weight lifted is going to be drastically effected.

The different interval methods illicit a different response to the cardio system.

But many coaches apply the intervals to workouts that aren't really cardio, but the intervals are sure making the resistance training suffer.

I personally think faster progress could be seen on resistance and cardio aspects of fitness by just running 2 programs that focus on each specifically.
The old "jack of all trades, master of none".

If there are specific cardio goals - some form of interval training can be useful at some point.

sijomial

Here's an example for you using an indoor bike with a power meter.
This 12 minute workout would be preceded by a separate warmup routine.




The line "FTP" refers to the rider's Functional Threshold Power (the maximum level of sustainable power output the rider can manage for an hour).

The 10:20 refers to the ten intervals of 10 seconds all out sprinting and 20 seconds recovery. Although that recovery period won't allow full recovery and each sprint will get harder and harder and most likely see performance/power dropping off.
Puking a possibility!

There's two answers to the question What is a HIIT workout?

1. Deeply unpleasant.
2. Nothing like 99% of the workouts wrongly labelled as HIIT on YouTube most of which are circuit training, aerobics or any old cardio intervals. All of which are perfectly valid and valuable exercise modalities and don't need false advertising.

MikePfirrman

This is a pretty typical HIIT workout for me. The only thing that's been said that I disagree with is that it's always short. Mine last up to around an hour but I've been doing cardio six days a week for like 15 years. So I've built up to this type of workout.

Some say it's anything over 85% of max HR, usually for short durations, but I've done up to 2 minute hard intervals w/ one minute breaks for an hour. And I know a lot of world class rowers that put my workouts to shame. I know one guy that's over 60 and has set some records that it's nothing for him to do 20 X 500m sprint workouts (8 is brutal, 20 is just sick) and he actually has some health issues due to being diabetic but he's a world record holder on the indoor rower.

You do not want to do HIIT if you don't have a great cardio base first and the way you get a cardio base is just doing cardio 3 times a week or more at a very comfortable level (for you), which to me
means under 70% of max HR. That's the tricky part. Most that have never done HIIT don't know what their max HR is and shouldn't find out because it involves pushing it as hard as you can for something like 20 minutes or blocks of 5 minutes X 4. Without base conditioning, no one should do that.

I remember around two years into my weight loss I had been doing spinning 4 times a week for two years. At that point, I was just starting to get in good shape. A guy came in that was my age, was thinner than me and it was his first class. So he was gonna keep up with the fat guy. He had a mild heart attack -- scary as hell.

Only push after 3 months or so of at least 3 days a week. If you can't do that yet, build slowly up to it.

MikePfirrman

A max HR type of workout looks like this. It takes around 6 months or more of solid conditioning before you even want to attempt one of these type workouts and it might even be a good idea to have a doc clear you first. BTW, you never reach "max", you should only reach roughly 95% of max but it gives you a pretty clear idea of your max.

I believe this was a 2K X 4 workout on the rowing machine.