HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. Now, this is where the “more for less” concept comes in, but don’t be fooled, you will be making up for that lost time with much higher-you guessed it-intensity!

The question is do you have what it takes to go all out for a short amount of time, rather than mindlessly wander through your current ineffective cardio routine? Consider this:

In an Australian study, people who cranked out 20 minutes of High Intensity Interval Training 3 days a week dropped 10 percent of their body fat, while those who exercised longer but at a lower intensity didn’t lose any!

How Do I Do It?

There are many different variations of HIIT, and you can apply them to nearly all of the common methods of cardio training. Let’s say you normally go to the gym and ride an exercise bike for an hour at a steady pace. To incorporate HIIT into your workout, here are your options:

6/9: This is the method used in the Australian study referenced above, and this is what I personally recommend. The numbers stand for seconds, and in this case, “6/9″ means you would sprint all out for 6 seconds, then slow to about 50-60% for 9 seconds. Of course, you would continue repeating this cycle for as long as you can (you didn’t think you’d be done in 15 seconds did you?!).

For example, hop on the exercise bike and warm up for 2-3 minutes at about 40-50% of your maximum effort. Once you hit the end of your warmup session, BAM!, launch into a full out sprint for 6 seconds. Then, slow to about 50-60% for 9 seconds, and BAM!, full out sprint for another 6 seconds. So, each full 6/9 interval lasts 15 seconds, or 4 intervals per minute. Keep repeating this cycle for as long as you can, but be sure that you are going as hard as possible for each 6 second sprint interval. It’s OK if you can only last a few minutes the first few times. Your endurance will build, as your waist shrinks.

30/30: The “half and half” method was one of the first accepted ways of doing HIIT. Since then, we’ve learned that shorter bursts produce greater results. Reason being, you can’t really go absolutely all out for a full 30 seconds. Some practice even higher intervals of 60/60 or more. If you can last for that long, then you aren’t really giving your maximum effort the entire time.

That’s why short 6 second bursts are better, because you only have to sustain that maximum intensity for a short time. However, longer intervals such as 30/30 and even 30/60 can be useful for beginners. You may want to start here if you’re not used to very high intensity in your current cardio training, then you can work your way up to the more efficient 6/9 or 8/12 intervals.

Why Does It Work?

When you are giving your all out maximum effort, your body produces more of a chemical called catecholamine. Can you guess what catecholamine does? That’s right: it triggers your body to start burning fat. Even better, the higher your intensity and the more catecholamine your body produces, the longer the fat-burning process will last. This means you will be reaping the benefits of your HIIT session for up to 36 hours after you’re done!

Now, get out there, and get on the HIIT wagon! Remember, the first two letters are the most important. HIGH INTENSITY!

Last night I crawled into bed at 9:00 with muscles aching, it felt good.

I’d been listening to NPR on the way home and was getting seriously frazzled about the whole 700 billion thing and the economy. I even started to talk about it as we headed out the door on our run.

Thoughts of anything soon evaporated as we picked up the pace.

I don’t want any of you reading this to think I’m some sort of super in shape athlete who one day just decided to pick up a new sport. I’m a six foot tall 245 pound nice guy with a belly. Running currently sucks.

Anyway, everything that had concerned me through the day was erased by the rhythmic pounding of my feet. I would see Cate a few paces ahead and look over her shoulder to the next intersection. We’d get closer and my pace would drop a little in hopes that it would be like last time. She just pushed on, crossed the street and kept running.

Hmm, I can handle one more block. Reach for the door knob, hand to the back pocket, loose shoulders, don’t bounce.

Thankfully, the next block we slowed to a brisk walk. I wondered if we were going to have an extra bit of walking. Nope.

We continued on the same route we did yesterday only I think we ran closer to 75% of the time. There were a couple stints where Cate got pretty far ahead but I kept running until I caught up.

It wasn’t fun while it was happening and I probably had the sour look of pain and suffering on my face the whole time but when we got back I felt good.

I had willed my body to do something it wasn’t accustomed to and it reluctantly obeyed. The feeling of personal victory also took care of my fears about the economy.

Small triumphs in any form set your brain up to expect a win instead of settling for defeat.

My wife used to run cross country so I thought to myself she’ll make the perfect running partner/coach.

Last Saturday we went out and covered about three miles, mostly walking, with some short stints of slow jogs. We’d pick a park bench and leisurely jog to it never really breaking a sweat.

Tonight was different. We’re house sitting for her parents and I suppose running her old routes added a bit of vigor to the pace. I’m not complaining, this is what I signed up for. I want to become a runner so I pushed. It felt good-I got sweaty.

I didn’t have my Polar heart rate monitor or my Nike+ iPod but I believe we covered about two and a half miles with a little less than fifty percent running. It felt sort of like intervals because as soon as my heart rate dropped we picked up the pace again. Fun times.

I’ll keep you all posted with my progress. I’m going to stick with this until it’s fun.

Posted from the iPhone so go easy on the grammer and spelling critiques.

Sunday morning I woke up at around 9:30 with a good hang over. I shuffled out to the living room where I saw the pizza box surrounded by a couple empty bottles of La Fin du Mond on the coffee table. It’s easy to convince yourself after a couple of cocktails that ordering a pizza in the middle of the night is OK because you deserve something good for dieting all week and you’ll work it off at the gym or on your bike. I remember making this rationalization to my wife as I dialed the number for Imo’s Pizza.

I plopped down on the couch and pushed the bottles aside so I could see the TV. My bike seemingly mocks my pain from the corner. I imagine that if it were actually alive it would jump on my chest and lick my face until it was taken outside to play. I flip through a couple of channels and don’t see anything appealing.

After digging around the closet I find shorts, a t-shirt and my cycling shoes I moved back to the couch thinking that I’ve completed one of the more difficult parts of going out for a ride.

I looked over at my bike and thought its now or never so I pumped up the tires and carried it down the stairs. I know what your thinking, he hasn’t ridden his bike in so long the tires are flat. Thats not exactly true, it just rolls faster with a touch over 100psi and road bike tires lose air pretty quickly.

So there I was on the street, I pulled out onto Grand and got in the bike lane. This hurts, I thought as I clicked into an easier gear, I’ll just ride to the 7-Eleven and get something to drink and loaf around the park for a bit.

I left the 7-Eleven after a few swallows of Gatorade and headed away from the park and towards the city. I went through a few neighborhoods and after I started sweating I felt a bit better. The fresh air and gorgeous temperatures paired with some exercise were doing wonders for my hang over.

I clicked down a gear, stole a glance at the Polar CS600 cycling computer and realized I was cruising at around 18mph with a cadence of 90rpm. Hmm, I’m actually out on a ride, lets see where this goes. I peddled out of the neighborhood I was in and towards where I knew I’d run into some hills.

My heart rate is at 150bpm and I see a huge hill. I click the iPod Shuffle through a couple of songs and end up stopping at one of my favorite Mastondon songs: Blood and Thunder. It’s metal and excruciatingly heavy and fast but it sets the perfect cadence for a long climb. Half way up the hill my Polar is beeping at me because my heart rate has redlined. I can feel the lactic acid burning in my legs.

I click down a gear and jump out of the saddle. I’m enjoying this and making my legs suffer more for even thinking about complaining and slowing down. The song crescendos and my cadence picks up even more. I crest the hill and tapper the speed a little to help my heart rate go back to something manageable. I can feel the lactic acid in my legs being swept away as my breathing slows.

I’ve been out for over an hour now and decide to point the bike towards a series of hills that head back into the city. I figure I’m already out here and starting to feel pretty good so I should do some intervals on the hills.

I get to the first one and blow past the anaerobic threshold (AT) were my legs start burning energy without oxygen.

An all out sprint, which requires a great deal of power output in a short period of time, uses the anaerobic system. The energy is quickly available, but the anaerobic pathways are not very efficient; short term energy stores are rapidly depleted, lactic acid builds up, and exercise soon comes to a halt. After a brief rest, the system is recharged and ready for the next sprint. Distance work, which requires a steady power output over a long period of time, uses the aerobic system. These pathways can’t generate the speed of the anaerobic, but they do possess a great deal more efficiency and endurance. Depending upon the distance, and effort, the body can use different proportions of both of these systems.

Riding down the backside of the hill I spin quickly to help nice clean blood to flow to my legs. As soon as I’ve recovered I’m banging up the next hill again. I’m doing whats called HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) or sprint interval training is an exercise strategy that is intended to improve performance with short training sessions.

A HIIT session involves a warmup period, several short, maximum-intensity efforts separated by moderate recovery intervals, and a cooldown period. The period of alternating effort and recovery intervals typically lasts a total of 15 minutes.

Studies have shown this method to be more effective at burning fat and maintaining, or building, muscle mass than high-volume, lower intensity aerobic work-outs. A study by Gibala et al demonstrated 2.5 hours of sprint interval training produced similar biochemical muscle changes to 10.5 hours of endurance training and similar endurance performance benefits. According to a study by King, HIIT increases the resting metabolic rate (RMR) for the following 24 hours due to excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, and may improve maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max) more effectively than doing only traditional, long aerobic workouts. Long aerobic workouts have been promoted as the best method to reduce fat, as fatty acid utilization usually occurs after at least 30 minutes of training. HIIT is somewhat counter intuitive in this regard, but has nonetheless been shown to burn fat more effectively. There may be a number of factors that contribute to this, including an increase in RMR, and possibly other physiological effects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training

I’ll write an article on this soon that explains the weight loss advantages but for now back to my story.

After the hills I head towards a nice flat rolling road and I am on my way home. I’m feeling quite good and now longer have a headache. I make the turn onto Grand Boulevard and cruise slowly looking over my shoulder to see if my wife is on her way home. I’d hate for her to see me loping along at 12mph and think if I see her car I’ll crank it up and race her through the traffic.

She is already home and greets me at the door. I jump in the shower as I tell her about my ride. It was marvelous I say as I think about how much I thought it was going to hurt when I left.

Its amazing how just getting out there is the hardest part. But once I do its equally amazing how much fun it can be and how it can really make you feel better. Like Ellen, Laura and others here have said just lace up your shoes and go. I usually find that by the time your halfway to your original goal you start to feel energized and end up on a two hour ride instead of a twenty minute one.