INTERVAL/HIIT TRAINING

Intervals: Athletes and sports people use it as a training technique. If it is good enough for athletes, it's good enough for me (and you).

The principles of interval training involve doing set amounts of work followed by recovery periods which are then repeated a given amount of times. An example of this would be running for 3 minutes followed by a recovery walk for 2 minutes, repeated 5 times. The intensity and duration of these intervals may vary depending on your desired results and your fitness levels. The ability to personalise the work time, intensity and recovery period gives this training technique a lot of flexibility and makes basic interval training great for all fitness levels.

Interval training is effective because it makes you work at a higher intensity than you would in a steady pace training session, helping to improve aerobic capacity which in turn enables training to be carried out for longer periods of time at varying intensities. The metabolism boosting effects of higher intensity intervals are believed to make it more effective at inducing fat loss than moderate intensity training for the same duration.

A more advanced version of interval training is HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). This technique involves working at near maximum capacity for a very short period of time followed by a short recovery period between intervals. A well known version of HIIT is the 'Tabata Protocol' which involves doing 20 seconds of high intensity work with 20 seconds recovery repeated 8 times. It should be noted that this workout only lasts for a very short period of time... by this stage, you should have reached the point where you are unable to continue training at this intensity. HIIT training has been proved to one of the fastest ways to boost your metabolic rate.

HIIT is not recommended for those who are new to exercise. In our classes, new exercisers are made to work at a moderate intensity during HIIT workouts and slowly build up work rate as fitness improves.