HIIT Training (High Intensity Interval Training) (page 3)
HIIT Training for Everyone
Most anybody can do HIIT; this is not something reserved just for the very fit. Let’s use running on the treadmill as an example.
After a 5-10-minute warm-up (which should include several sub-intense work intervals), a very fit person runs eight work intervals between 10 and 12 mph, beginning at 10 and increasing up to 12, with durations ranging from 30 seconds (10 mph) to 20 seconds (12 mph). The rest intervals are at, say, 2.8 mph and last between two and four minutes. This is an example, and actual numerical values will vary from individual to individual. Warm-down is for five minutes.
Are you thinking, “Oh come on! I can’t run 12 mph!”? Then find the speed that fries you in 30 seconds. If only an 8 mph run takes it all out of you within 15-30 seconds, and you cannot last one second longer, you just completed a HIIT interval. If you’re obese and new to exercise, then perhaps your maximum speed for 30 seconds is 5 mph. The point is, a true HIIT interval is a speed that you can run for 15-30 seconds, but not 31 seconds.
The jack-rabbit next to you may be doing 12 mph, but rest assured, he or she feels just as pummeled at the end of 20 seconds as you do at the end of your 30 seconds at 5 mph. It’s all relative.
On a perceived exertion scale of 1 to 10, 1 being how you feel while soaking in a hot tub, and 10 being how you’d feel if you were attempting to get away from a hungry tiger snapping at your heels, your work interval should make you feel pretty close to 10.
If you can sustain the work interval for longer than 30 seconds, you are not doing true HIIT. Though 45-second-max intervals are no doubt very intense, and will bring on serious results, they just aren’t as stellar as 15-30-second max intervals in which one second beyond is absolutely unthinkable.
A work interval and rest interval make one HIIT cycle. If after 30 seconds you don’t feel punished, go faster on the next work interval. I can’t emphasize this enough. There’s a lot of people out there who think they’re doing HIIT, just because they slow down after 30 seconds, when indeed, they could have stretched the work interval out to a full minute or even two or three minutes. Remember, the work interval is for up to 30 seconds, but impossible to do 31 seconds.
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