HIIT on a threadmill

g-punkteffekt

Hi y'all
so I've been reading some stuff here and decided to try the HIIT for a while instead of the usual 40mins - 1hr on a threadmill I had been doing for my cardio. What do you think of this method, and will it be more effective in muscle preservation and fat loss?

I usually do 5mins warm up at 9km/h (2% incline)

then I do 1 min sprints @ 5% incline followed by 2 mins cooldown

yesterday I did my sprints at 12, 13, 14, 14, 14, 13 km/h for 1 min each at 5% incline

It absolutely WRECKS me, and I'm soaked with sweat, and breathing heavy, grunting like a maniac in the gym, but the whole thing only takes 25 mins or less. Is this more effective than 40-60 mins jogging at 9km/h or so at 2%?

danke

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

MicraBoy

It absolutely WRECKS me, and I'm soaked with sweat, and breathing heavy, grunting like a maniac in the gym, but the whole thing only takes 25 mins or less. Is this more effective than 40-60 mins jogging at 9km/h or so at 2%?

I understood that unless you are on the verge of barfing by the end of HIIT sessions you are not doing it right. However if you are going that hard you shouldn't do it more than once or twice a week. So as Dave says may be mix it with low intensity cardio also, depending on the number of times you train and your goals.

Patto

g-punkteffekt wrote:

Hi y'all
so I've been reading some stuff here and decided to try the HIIT for a while instead of the usual 40mins - 1hr on a threadmill I had been doing for my cardio. What do you think of this method, and will it be more effective in muscle preservation and fat loss?

I usually do 5mins warm up at 9km/h (2% incline)

then I do 1 min sprints @ 5% incline followed by 2 mins cooldown

yesterday I did my sprints at 12, 13, 14, 14, 14, 13 km/h for 1 min each at 5% incline

It absolutely WRECKS me, and I'm soaked with sweat, and breathing heavy, grunting like a maniac in the gym, but the whole thing only takes 25 mins or less. Is this more effective than 40-60 mins jogging at 9km/h or so at 2%?

danke

I'm sometimes very confused by what is describered as HIIT. To me it is an anaerobic session something like sprint repeats, for example:

10Mx6 with 10m walk back recovery, 90sec recovery, 20Mx6 with walk back recovery, 90sec recovery, 30Mx6 with walk back recovery, 90sec recovey, 50Mx6 with walk back recovery. These are sprints ran at full speed which for someone who can run a 14sec 100M is 26Kmph.

This will take less than 20minutes, unless you are very anaerobically fit you will be in bits for 2-5days. It is very hard on your CNS and will negatively affect any gym sessions within the recovery period. I understand this will induce EPOC so you would go on burning fat and using extra energy for a good while after your sessions is finished. This type of training is characterised by being fairly tough while you are doing it but you will be profoundly tired for at least 48hrs afterwards.

Doing longer intervals at a slower pace (e.g. 13Kmph) can be very hard on you heart and lungs but is mainly, but not completely unless you are very fit, an aerobic activity. You are only running at 50% of your max, even doing shorter intervals at 75% or 20Kmph is still mainly an aerobic excerise. This type of exercise is quite tough when you are doing it but there is little impact on your CNS and you recover quite quickly (you could do this every day, you could even do a gym session later in the same day). Just to put this in perspective 16Kmph is not even a competitive 5Km pace for a club runner.

To answer your question, IMO there is little difference between your HIIT and the long run at 9Kmh, I'm sure many may disagree but the most important thing is its nice to have a bit of variety and its more important to be doing any kind of aerobic work consistantly.