High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – Kick the Cardio Bunny Routine for Better Results

I had been writing a post about Fitocracy, but I’m going to put it on the backburner for now because I think addressing cardio is way more urgent (although I can’t wait to post the Fitocracy one either!).

For as long as I’ve remembered, I’ve hated cardio.  Most of the women at every gym I have ever gone to do a slow-pace workout that lasts for upwards of 20 minutes, sometimes as long as one to two hours and it is just so terribly boring to me. I’ve done the same thing before, and it’s just a long, dull struggle of “when is this going to be over!?” I’ve never understood how someone could be content just swinging their legs along the elliptical for an hour.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of people who absolutely adore running a few miles, or cycling for long distances or doing other endurance sports, and that is fantastic. But I’m trying to get through to the women who think long runs and long machine workouts are the best way that cardio can burn fat, and that they’re the only way to get in better cardiovascular shape. I think a lot of women do these workouts because they’re never told otherwise. That’s why you see most women spend over half their time at the gym on a treadmill or elliptical or bicycle, with many of them reading a book or magazine, or watching TV, utterly unengaged.

So what should I be doing instead?

I’d like to introduce a novel, somewhat-new concept: high intensity interval training, or HIIT. The idea is that you do shorter bursts of intense work (say, sprints), followed by longer recovery work such as walking or resting. This can be done with sprinting/walking, bodyweight exercises/rest, most things really, as long as you’re exercising at a really intense level, followed by recovery. Then you repeat it. It typically lasts no more than 20 minutes, and I’ve seen programs as short as 4 minutes.

In my opinion, the best part of this is that it’s done for a much shorter period of time than your usual cardio workout. I’ve never seen an account of anyone going for longer than 20 minutes, mostly because you’re just working so damn hard. You no longer have to set aside an hour to get your cardio in, hell you can get your cardio done in under 10 minutes.

There have been tons of studies done on HIIT vs. long, slow-pace cardio – fat loss between the two, cardiovascular improvements, etc. I’m going to pull a lot of my stats from a bodybuilding.com article on HIIT found here,which quotes a number of these studies. One of the most mind-blowing ones reported that:

females following a 20-minute HIIT program, consisting of 8-second sprints followed by 12 seconds of rest, lost six times more body fat than the group who followed a 40-minute cardio program performed at a constant intensity of 60 percent of their maximum heart rate.

I’d like to let that sink it. By spending half the amount of time working out, women were able to lose six times as much fat as the women doing steady-pace cardio. I haven’t found the exact percentages lost, but even if the women doing the 40 minute sessions only lost 1% of body fat on average, the other group would have lost 6%. That’s the difference between marginal fat loss (sure it happened, but you can’t tell) and noticeable fat loss.

After doing HIIT, you will burn more calories in the 24 hours following your workout than if you did steady-pace cardio – about 10% more calories. There is also less muscle loss with HIIT, and it is a much more efficient means of increasing cardiovascular fitness as well.

Okay, I’m sold. How can I start doing HIIT?

Another one of my favorite things is that there’s tons of ways to do HIIT. If you don’t have access to it, you don’t need equipment, or even proper running shoes, so there’s an option for everyone. (Although if you’re going to be running, you should definitely have good running shoes.) Here’s a list of ways to start out:

• follow the 8-week program outlined in the bodybuilding.com article . You can use an elliptical, a treadmill, stationary bike, or run outside. Their program starts with a 1:4 work-to-recovery ratio, working up to 2:1.
• do 8 seconds of sprinting followed by 12 seconds of walking or resting, and repeat for 20 minutes
• Use the Tabata method – perform bodyweight exercises such as burpees, lunges, squats, pushups, tricep dips, v-sits, etc. for 20 second intervals, followed by 10 seconds of rest. Do this for 4 minutes.
• Crossfit – it’s based on functional fitness and high intensity exercise that incorporates weightlifting, plyometrics, and gymnastics. Be sure to research a reputable Crossfit box – you want to make sure your trainers are focusing on form and not reps or time, because doing Olympic lifts and gymnastics with bad form will hurt you. It can be very expensive, but it is less focused on the work/time ratio, and can be a way to incorporate weightlifting and cardio into the same workout.

Since I started HIIT, I no longer dread cardio, which is damn huge for me. Besides cutting my cardio workouts in half and getting a better result, I feel more accomplished afterwards, similar to how I feel after a hard session of heavy weightlifting. So give it a try, and stick with it for a few months. You’ll probably find you’ll have more free time and faster results, so what’s there to lose?