That’s no spelling error!

HIIT is an acronym for High Intensity Interval Training. The hallmark of HIIT is repeated, extremely hard bouts of work interspersed with periods of recovery. During your work intervals, you’ll be challenging yourself nearly to your max.

It is important to really push yourself during the work periods and take advantage of the recovery periods too. When your body is going all-out during true HIIT, it relies on your anaerobic pathways (breaking down glucose without oxygen). This provides an immediate bump in energy, but the amount is very limited—which means the length of time you can sustain your maximum effort is very limited too.

Recovering before the next interval is essential. The variation from max effort to recovery provides great cardio conditioning.

So, where to start. There are HIIT classes at some of the local gyms, or you can find different workout videos on YouTube. Make sure you have good form for any of the intervals online because bad form can lead to injury. If in doubt, ask a trainer for guidance.

I like Growing Annanas. She doesn’t talk much, and although her music isn’t great, the descriptions of her videos are handy. This particular video is just a 25 minute HIIT workout with a cool down. It doesn’t require equipment, but the workout is fierce. If you need to make it easier, modify the interval times. Instead of 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest, push yourself to the max for 20 or 40 seconds and use the remaining time for recovery. Give it a go!