Yesterday, I took a class on High Intensity Interval Training vs. Continuous Cardio: The battle of the Aerobic Titans. This was a great class and I wanted to share some of my new knowledge that I received. Thinking back to high school, I always thought that to run a half or full marathon I just needed to put in miles. Well I was right but also so wrong, the new info I received said that HIIT is the way to go. This last race I did, I only did HIIT cardio workouts with added functional weight training 3 days a week. I could not believe how easy this last race was and I never had to run more than an hour for training and still kept on muscle. When I came in at 1:39, my best time, I knew that I needed to build a program for my online personal training website. It will be geared towards runners like myself, to keep and gain muscle while training for long-distance races.
What is a HIIT program:
A HIIT workout are the work interval bouts of exercise that range from 5 sec.- 8 min. The rest interval is the recovery between exercise intervals, which can be quite different. An example of a HIIT workout would be 1 minute work and 4 minute rest, or 5minute workout 5 minute rest. Work means as hard as you can go and rest means light jog or walk.
Here is one work out I can give to you:
Equipment Needed: Track or Treadmill HIIT
Warm-up: 10 minute light run
Intervals: 800 meter runs at approximately 90 max heart rate-each interval should be timed
Rest Interval: Light jog or walk for as long as it took you to run the 800 meter.
Work/rest ratio: 1-to-1 ratio. The time for the interval (800 meter) and rest interval should be the same.
Frequency: Try to complete 4 rounds
Modify: The distance of the intervals can be adjusted from 200-1000 meter. Vary length of the rest interval.
One last tip, you should only perform HIIT three times a week to produce the best result while limiting injury. These work outs can be very demanding on your body so make sure your body is fully recovered before you do another work out.
Try this work out and let me know how it goes!