HIIT Advice

[balkan11]

I've been doing HIIT for a while now to aid in fat loss and increase endurance, though I believe now I've been doing it incorrectly this entire time. My typical hiit routine consists of a couple minutes warm up, about 8 rounds of 1 minutes high intensity and then 1 minute low intensity, then a couple minutes to cool down. I haven't really been keeping tracking of my heart rate and how much it spikes or drops. My "low intensity" is around 3.0 (which now I don't believe is low enough for proper recovery) and my average "high intensity" is around 9.0-9.5. So, essentially, I think my cardio sessions have been more or less steady state based.

Can anyone advise what the premise of HIIT is based off of and what I should be doing differently to make my HIIT more effective?

 

[mountainman33]

My protocol that really helped me was 30 seconds high/30 seconds low. But the high was all out, balls to the wall kicking my @ss. I never did it on the treadmill, it was always on the floor and trying to use as many body parts as possible, almost Tabata style: Shuttle sprints with dumbbells, explosive Burpees, split squat thrusts to plyo push ups and back. I always found that the treadmill transition time was too slow for me personally from fast to slow. Just a few thoughts...

 

[balkan11]

My protocol that really helped me was 30 seconds high/30 seconds low. But the high was all out, balls to the wall kicking my @ss. I never did it on the treadmill, it was always on the floor and trying to use as many body parts as possible, almost Tabata style: Shuttle sprints with dumbbells, explosive Burpees, split squat thrusts to plyo push ups and back. I always found that the treadmill transition time was too slow for me personally from fast to slow. Just a few thoughts...

I've done HIIT in that fashion a few times...without weights, just body weight. I do like doing that once in a while, it helps break up the monotony of it all. Also, I used to do 30 seconds on, 1 minute rest. But I ended up having a lot of knee and shin pain..so I reverted to 1 min on/1 min off to reduce risk of injury. I too find that the treadmill transition time is really slow, and that I think may hinder me a bit in terms of HIIT effectiveness.

When doing your cardio circuit, have you tracked your heart rate at all whilst doing it?

 

[mountainman33]

No heart rate tracking for me, it's mostly by feel. Get to the point till I can hardly breath and feel my heart pounding in my chest, rest until I can breath almost normal again then right back at it.

 

[balkan11]

No heart rate tracking for me, it's mostly by feel. Get to the point till I can hardly breath and feel my heart pounding in my chest, rest until I can breath almost normal again then right back at it.

Have you found that 30 seconds is enough recovery time in between rounds? Or does it vary....like in the first few rounds it'll be around 30 seconds and then as you progress into the routine, you need a longer amount of time to recover because you're more fatigued at this point?

 

[mountainman33]

30 seconds wasn't enough at first, but I worked up to it. If I can get to almost fully recovered by 30 seconds of a given exercise, I'll either add something/change something or change to a whole new exercise all together. I usually go through about 10 circuits total. 30 seconds is my goal through all 10 sets, if I can't get to that by the 10th time through then I keep working towards it, and as I said before, once I hit that I'll change things up.

 

[balkan11]

30 seconds wasn't enough at first, but I worked up to it. If I can get to almost fully recovered by 30 seconds of a given exercise, I'll either add something/change something or change to a whole new exercise all together. I usually go through about 10 circuits total. 30 seconds is my goal through all 10 sets, if I can't get to that by the 10th time through then I keep working towards it, and as I said before, once I hit that I'll change things up.

I see, thank you!

 

[Tomahawk88]

When I was doing hiit it was 30 seconds all out sprint then basically 2 minutes recovery. Treadmills don't transition fast enough.

 

[nicksox15]

When I was doing hiit it was 30 seconds all out sprint then basically 2 minutes recovery. Treadmills don't transition fast enough.

I'm similar to this, between 30-40 seconds all out sprint, then around 1:30-1:45 recovery. This is usually on the treadmill as well, especially today with windchills at -50