So, what is it?
HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, and it is ideal for anyone pushed for time, hence the words ‘high intensity’. 20 – 30 minutes of training can be equal to a whole hour’s moderate workout, which means that you don’t need to worry about spending hours of the time you don’t have.
HIIT is also significantly effective in gaining muscle and reducing fat and studies have shown clear results of the benefits of high intensity sessions when compared to slower cardio sessions. Not only does it affect you while at the gym, but has a strong after-effect that aids your workout even further. This training increases the metabolic afterburn, meaning you will continue to burn calories up to 6 hours after leaving the gym!
What can HIIT involve?
Tabata is a great form of HIIT that really burns fat and builds muscle. It can be used for any type of exercise, and emphasises the high intensity part of the training by allowing you to complete short bursts of all-out activity with minor breaks in between each one. For example, you could do 20 seconds of strong, full-on training and break for 10 seconds before repeating this 8 or more times to total around 4 minutes of workout.
Of course, this is only one example of a massive variety of workouts you can do using this method of training. But that doesn’t mean that you should be using this method all of the time – as HIIT is so intense, too much of it can be damaging, so you need to know how to pace yourself.
What we can do
We can figure out exactly how much training you need and can monitor how it is working for you personally. At Diana’s, we run HIIT classes Monday-Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, combining cardio exercises and muscular toning in our get-lean programme.
So what are you waiting for. HIIT the gym!