How to Get the Most Out of Your HIIT Workouts
High-Intensity Interval Training or HIIT workouts are exercises that require a lot of effort and energy for a short period of time. This high-intensity training program is followed by a short resting time. For example, you’re going to do a 30-second sprint followed by a minute of a brisk walk. After that, you’re back to the 30-second sprint and so on.
HIIT workouts are good fat burners and are very effective exercises to improve your cardiorespiratory endurance. But, for some, even if they do these HIIT exercises regularly, they still don’t see improvements. If they do, they only see a little. The reason for this is that they don’t follow the tips in this article.
1. Eat for fuel
You need carbohydrates for fuel to effectively perform a complete HIIT workout set. Without them, you’ll feel weak or tire more easily. It’s good to eat whole grain bread, oats, or rice 2-3 hours before your workout. Better yet, add a protein-rich food to it.
2. Do warmups and cooldowns
Warmups will help you prevent injury as they prepare your muscles and joints for intense activity. Cooldowns are good to help you adjust to your short resting state while still keeping you active and burning fat.
Both of these pre and post-workout movements can minimize muscle soreness and improve post-workout recovery. This way, you can perform at the same effectiveness for the next day.
3. Use the proper workout form
As you focus your efforts on exerting bursts of energy, you’ll tend to forget on keeping proper form while exercising. To fix this, you need to practice consciously separating your mind from your body.
The technique is to be familiar first with an exercise’s proper form. Slowly automate the exercise’s proper movement and form. Then slowly add speed. Once you get used to a fast pace of the workout while performing it effectively with proper form, go full blast while keeping attention on the duration of the HIIT.
4. Wear the right shoes
In addition to avoiding injuries while maintaining a proper workout form, using the right shoes for it is a major factor. HIIT workouts involve a lot of jumping and running. You’ll need to have good support on your knees and a soft cushion on your soles when you land or trample. Choosing running instead of training shoes is your best bet.
5. Keep your resting intervals short
A common factor that HIITs are mostly rendered ineffective is because people have long resting times. There is a standard activity-to-resting ratio in HIIT. Beginners should employ the 1:2 ratio. For example, a 30-second burst exercise should be followed by a minute of rest.
As your cardio endurance improves, you can settle for 15-30 seconds of resting. But in general, to make your HIITs effective, always keep your resting intervals under 2 minutes.
6. Breathe properly
So you have all the proper preparation, equipment, and form to do your highly intense workouts. The last thing you need to do is to focus on breathing properly. Keep your oxygen supply at maximum so you’ll maintain the power to keep going.
Breathe through your nose and mouth and exhale with a “shush” sound. When exhaling, let the air out through your teeth. This technique will give you more energy in your pelvic muscles and diaphragm which makes you perform your exercises harder and faster.
7. Vary your HIIT workouts
Getting better in doing your HIITs is good. But, on the downside, your body becomes more efficient in doing high-intensity activities. This makes your current performance ineffective.
So, don’t do the same HIITs consecutively. For example, if you’re doing sprints today, do jump rope exercises tomorrow and burpees the day after.
8. Get proper sleep
Eating carb 2-3 hours before your HIIT workout isn’t just a factor that affects your exercising energy. Resting plays a large role as well. You don’t want to get dizzy and fade away while doing jumping jacks.
Always make sure that you get 6-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night.
9. Do HIITs during your peak hours
Avoid having your HIITs right after you wake up, you’ll be exerting less energy due to grogginess. Don’t do your workouts too late as well, because a late-night HIIT session will ruin your sleep quality and schedule by making it difficult for you to doze off.
To know you’re doing your HIITs right, you must exercise to the point your heart rates are at 70% to 90% of your maximum heart rate (MHR). To calculate your MHR, subtract 200 with your age. Let’s assume you’re 29 years old, so the formula looks like this (MHR = 200 - 29). Since your MHR is 191 and HIITs are when your heart rate is at 90%, this means you must achieve a heart rate of 172 when doing your HIIT workouts.
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