How to Properly Perform Your HIIT Workouts
The term “high intensity” gets thrown around too freely.
If you do a quick search for “best HIIT workouts” — that’s high intensity interval training — you’ll find a wide variety of options with many different work-to-rest ratios. Some will prescribe 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off — some will suggest working for as long as one minute before taking a rest.
While a lot of these workouts have value and can potentially yield some positive results, there is one discrepancy that needs to be addressed: There is a big physiological difference between a conditioning workout and a true high intensity workout.
How is HIIT different?
The reason why a lot of the 20, 30, and even 60 second HIIT workouts you see aren’t “true HIIT” sessions is because when you’re performing HIIT, your body is tapping into a specific energy system — to be precise, the ATP-PC (adenosine triphosphate and phosphocreatine) system.
The reason you need to know that is because this particular system is capable of providing energy for maximal intensity, short duration exercise for between 10 to 15 seconds before it is exhausted. When we’re performing a HIIT session, our goal should be to improve the work capacity of this energy system and, in turn, improve our…
