New HIIT Research: A Practical Model For High Intensity Interval Training

By Tom Venuto
www.BurnTheFat.com
 
High intensity interval training, also known as HIIT, has become immensely popular in the last decade. HIIT involves alternating brief bursts of very high intensity exercise (work intervals) with brief segments of lower intensity exercise (recovery intervals). One problem with some types of HIIT is that they call for such high intensity bursts - literally all out sprints - that they’re not practical for everyone, and possibly not even safe for older or overweight individuals.

A recent study out of McMaster University has tested a protocol for HIIT that produces impressive results in a short period of time without the need for “all-out” sprints…


Many of the previous studies on HIIT used ALL-OUT intervals on a specialized cycle ergometer, pedaling against a high resistance.

This type of training takes a high level of commitment and motivation and can result in feelings of severe discomfort and even nausea.

One of my colleagues mentioned in our Burn the Fat Forums that he remembers exercise physiology class in college where they did all out cycle ergometer interval sprint testing and nearly everyone either puked or passed out.

The Tabata protocol for example, is a brief but brutal 4 minute HIIT workout often spoken of by trainers and trainees alike with both appreciation and dread. It’s no walk in the park.

The truth is, some HIIT protocols which have been tested in the lab to produce big improvements in cardiovascular function and conditioning in a short period of time, may not be practical or safe, especially for beginners, obese or older adults.

In this new study out of McMaster University, a HIIT protocol that was more practical and attainable for the general population was tested to see how the results would compare to the more “brutal” very short, but extremely intense types of HIIT.

Here’s what the new HIIT protocol looked like:

Study duration: 2 weeks
Frequency: 3 sessions per week (mon, wed, fri)
Work intervals: 60 seconds @ constant load
Intensity Work intervals: “high intensity cycling at a workload that corresponded to the peak power achieved at the end of the ramp VO2peak test (355 +/- 10W)”
Recovery intervals: 75 seconds
Intensity Recovery Intervals: Low intensity cycling at 30W”
Rounds: 8-12 intervals
Progression: 8 intervals 1st two workouts, 10 intervals second two workouts, 12 intervals last 2 workouts.
Warm up: 3 min:
Duration of work intervals: 8-12 minutes
Total time spent: 21-29 minutes.

Results: In just 2 weeks, there were significant improvements in functional exercise performance and skeletal muscle adaptations (mitochondrial biogenesis). Subjects did not report any dizziness, nausea, light headedness that is often reported with all-out intervals.

They concluded that HIIT does not have to be all-out to produce significant fitness improvements and yet the total weekly time investment could remain under 1 hour.
On a personal note, I REALLY like this kind of interval training: 60 second work intervals repeated 8-12 times. Here’s why:

Body composition was not measured in this study, but I believe that enough energy expenditure can be achieved with 20-30 minutes of this style of interval training to make significant body comp improvements in addition to all the cardiovascular conditioning improvements.


That’s another problem with super-brief and super intense HIIT programs: The cardio and heart benefits are amazing, but you can only burn so many calories per minute, no matter how intensely you work. To call a 4-minute workout a “good fat burner” in the absolute sense is ridiculous.

Somewhere in between long duration slow/moderate steady state cardio and super short super-intense HIIT lies a sweet spot for fat-burning benefits… a place where intensity X duration yield an optimal total calorie expenditure at a reasonable time investment. Perhaps this 20-30 minute HIIT workout is it?

If you’ve read any of my other articles on cardio, you’ll know that I’m not against steady state cardio, walking or even light recreational exercise and miscellaneous activity as part of a fat loss program. All activity counts towards your total daily energy expenditure, and in fact, the little things often add up during the day more than you would imagine (just look up N.E.A.T. and see what you find).

But for your formal “cardio training” sessions, if you’re going to use traditional cardio modes (stationary cycle, etc.) and if your goal includes fat burning, and if your time is limited, then this type of HIIT is a great choice and you can now say it is research proven…

Not to mention… the excuse, “I don’t have enough time” has been officially busted!

Train hard and expect success!

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

Founder & CEO of
Burn The Fat Inner Circle

 

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is the author of the #1 best seller, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom is a lifetime natural bodybuilder and fat loss expert who achieved an astonishing 3.7% body fat level without drugs or supplements. Discover how to increase your metabolism and burn stubborn body fat, find out which foods burn fat and which foods turn to fat, plus get a free fat loss report and mini course by visiting Tom's site at: www.BurnTheFat.com

The Doctor Says, “Aerobics Will Kill You!”

By Tom Venuto
www.BurnTheFat.com
 
I recently got an email from a reader who was told by a fairly prominent doctor/author that aerobics and running will “kill you” (that was more or less the gist of it). As a result, you should avoid aerobics like the plague, says this MD. Since I’ve tolerated enough “steady state cardio is dead” and “aerobics doesn’t work” nonsense over the last few years, despite the success stories I keep churning out that clearly show otherwise, (not to mention my own bodybuilding success, which includes regular cardio), I thought I should not only answer my reader, but also make this topic into an article for anyone else who may have doubts.
Here’s the “killer cardio” question and my response:

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BURN THE FAT READER EMAIL:
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Tom, your articles are great. Here’s the problem. More runners die from sudden heart attack and stroke than any other form of exercise on the planet.

It’s because nothing is more foreign to human beings than getting their heart rate up and keeping it there for long periods of time.

Recent studies have shown that while there are benefits to aerobics, (like weight loss), in the long term, statistics show a direct increase in heart disease.

Part of the reason for this is that in an effort to adapt to the unnatural demands being put on the body, to economize, the heart and lungs actually shrink.

Just look at the long list of joint, bone, and muscle injuries that come along with running (it’s right there in the magazines).

As I know you know, a serious weight lifter, if he’s paying attention to form, should almost never suffer injury from weight training. The same is true for the following:

Instead of unnatural, self-abusive aerobics, the best way to actually increase heart and lung capacity and size is to go beyond aerobics. In short, spurts of intense exercise, such as wind-sprints, you move past your ability to produce ATP with oxygen as fast as you are using it, causing your muscles to become ATP depleted.

That’s the point at which your anaerobic energy system kicks in. This is also known as crossing your aerobic threshold.

Burst training, sprints, whatever you want to call it, it shouldn’t be done in addition to aerobics, it should be done in place of aerobics.

Incidentally, I am not saying that one shouldn’t walk, jog, bicycle, swim, etc, just be reasonable.

I had a heart condition that has been totally alleviated. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of each week, I go through a 45 minute weight training session, followed by a 20 minutes of the interval program.

Check it out, I think this sort of thing would be a great addition to your already good program.

-Jeff

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RESPONSE:
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While I agree with much of what you said about the benefits of intense “burst” exercise, I find the anti-running and anti-aerobics arguments promoted by these “experts” to be horribly inflexible, dogmatic and, unlike what you suggested, totally UNreasonable.

Based on the science, I also find the argument that traditional cardio or aerobics is “unhealthy” to be wholly unconvincing. That doctor isn’t giving the full picture.

I subscribe to many sports medicine and exercise science journals and I’ve certainly seen research papers looking at sudden death in elite runners, etc. But most of them were case studies and epidemiology. Believe me, there’s another side to the story.

Marathon running is a highly publicized sport, and the media loves bad news, so the oxymoron of a runner dying of a heart attack makes a great story, which means greater visibility for what is actually a very rare occurrence.

It’s also easy to cherry pick case studies on just about anything to start up a big scare.
This comes from the American Journal of Cardiology:

“The overall prevalence of sudden cardiac death during the marathon was only 0.002%, strikingly lower than for several other variables of risk for premature death calculated for the general U.S. population.”

Although highly trained athletes such as marathon runners may harbor underlying and potentially lethal cardiovascular disease, the risk for sudden cardiac death associated with such intense physical effort was exceedingly small.”

I also find comparing serious endurance athletes pushing their physical limits to regular cardio for general fitness training to be an inappropriate comparison.

What does a rare cardiac event during a 26 mile run have to do with you doing 30 or 45 minutes of jogging or me doing 40 minutes of moderate work on the stairmaster to get cut for a bodybuilding contest?
Even sillier are the people who keep using the late marathon runner and running author Jim Fixx as an example of anything but a guy who had a genetic predisposition for heart disease (gun was loaded). Rumor has it he was a long time smoker, too.

I know some bodybuilders and weight lifters who died of heart attacks in the gym. Should we argue against against weight lifting too? Should we just play it safe and stay on the couch? Freak incidents happen and heredity is a factor.

Please note, I’m saying all this as a strength/physique athlete (bodybuilder), who understands full well that excessive aerobics is counterproductive to my goals and that weight training is priority #1.
But in the right amounts, balanced with proper recovery (as you said, “reasonable”) regular cardio can be instrumental in helping me lower my body fat and it can benefit you in many other ways, physically and mentally.

There are MANY ways to do cardio and all of them have their place at certain times for certain people.
What you’re talking about with sprints or burst training is also known as High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT for short.

HIIT can be a great way to get cardiovascular conditioning and burn a lot of calories in a very time efficient manner.

Furthermore, a paper just published recently in the ACSM’s Exercise and Sport Sciences Review (July 2009) discussed the research suggesting that intense aerobic interval training provides greater benefits for the heart than low or moderate intensity exercise.
The benefits discussed included:

• Increased maximal oxygen uptake
• Improved heart muscle contractile function
• Improved heart muscle calcium handling
• reduced cardiac dysfunction in metabolic syndrome
• Reversed pathological cardiac hypertrophy
• Increased physiological hypertrophy of the heart muscle
• Overall improved quality of life and length of life by avoiding fatal heart attacks.

This is NOT an argument AGAINST regular cardio, it is evidence in favor of intense cardio.
I like HIIT and intense types of cardio! I don’t need to add it to my program because it’s already a part of it.
My first book about fat loss, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle was first published in 2002 and I recommended HIIT way back then - as well as regular cardio, not one or the other. I Still do!

There were also people promoting HIIT long before me. It’s not any revolutionary idea - people just keep putting new names and spins on it for marketing purposes.

The problem is, to argue in favor of HIIT should not be construed as arguing against conventional cardio or aerobics.

Many of the world’s best bodybuilders and fitness models used slow, steady state cardio exclusively prior to competitions and they got ripped right down to the six pack abs. They didn’t die of a heart attack and they didn’t lose muscle either.

In fact, many bodybuilders opt for low intensity cardio specifically for muscle retention when they get to the tail end of contest prep where body fat stores are getting low and food intake is low. Adding more high intensity training on top of all the weight training is often catabolic in that caloric deficit situation.

Listen, HIIT and other types of intense cardio are great. It’s time efficient, making it ideal for the busy person, and its very effective for both fat loss and cardiovascular conditioning. It’s also more engaging, as many people find longer, slower sessions of cardio boring.

If you have a history of heart disease and you smoke like a chimney and at the same time you decide you want to take up marathon running, ok, I’ll concede to some caution.
But, “Aerobics is going to kill you!”??????

GIVE ME A BREAK!

Perfect marketing hook for a cultish “HIIT is the only way” type of program… little more.
Bottom line: sure, do your HIIT, do your sprints, do your Tabatas….
OR…

Do your regular steady state aerobics or running too…
Or, do a little bit of everything like I do!

Be sure weight training is your foremost training priority and then do whatever type of cardio you enjoy and whatever type gets you the best results.

If you like to run, then RUN, and tell the “experts” who say otherwise to BUZZ OFF and take their sensationalistic journalism and marketing with them!

Train hard and expect success!

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

Founder & CEO of
Burn The Fat Inner Circle

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is the author of the #1 best seller, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom is a lifetime natural bodybuilder and fat loss expert who achieved an astonishing 3.7% body fat level without drugs or supplements. Discover how to increase your metabolism and burn stubborn body fat, find out which foods burn fat and which foods turn to fat, plus get a free fat loss report and mini course by visiting Tom's site at: www.BurnTheFat.com

An Insanely Effective Type of Interval Training

By Tom Venuto
www.BurnTheFat.com
 
High intensity interval training can be done in a variety of different ways. Here’s a wickedly-effective type of interval training: it requires no machines or fancy equipment, you can do it outside in the sunshine and fresh air, it develops killer conditioning, carves out legs like a sprinter, and burns calories at an accelerated rate…

In other articles about running/aerobics and high intensity interval training, as well as in my Fat loss books, I’ve written about how you can integrate both traditional steady state cardio as well as high intensity interval training into your training program for optimal body composition improvement, health and increased fitness - you don’t have to choose one form of cardio or the other. In fact, settling into dogmatic views about cardio will only limit you.

Traditional steady state cardio is pretty much self-explanatory and intuitive. But many people are still confused about the best way to do interval training.

An Insanely Effective Way To Do Interval Cardio

I’m not sure if there is a single best way to do intervals because there are so many choices and everyone is different in their goals, interests and personal preferences, so “best” is a relative thing. But let me give you one of my personal favorites that is breathtakingly effective:

Stair sprinting!

Your typical interval workout in the gym might be on a stationary cycle, treadmill or stairclimber with short 30-60 second bursts of high speed and/or resistance, followed by a 60-120 second period of low intensity recovery. That’s usually a 1:1 or 1:2 work to recovery interval. You then rinse and repeat for the desired number of intervals, usually between 6 and 12.

I sometimes have access to a great set of university stadium steps with a straight shot right up - 52 steps.
Sprinting it takes about 10 seconds or so, walking down about 30 seconds. Those are short intervals with a 1:3 work to recovery interval ratio. That wasn’t by design, it just happens to be how long it takes to run up and walk down that particular flight of stairs, but co-incidentally, that fits within common recommendations for short sprint-style intervals.

I make sure I’m warmed up first, I usually start with a couple flights up at a slow jog then a run, before sprinting, usually 10-12 rounds.

Even if you jog/run instead of sprint, (or pause briefly at the bottom of the stairs), when you do the math, you can figure that this usually doesn’t take more than 10-12 minutes.
Why do I like stadium step sprinting?

1. Stair sprinting is a time saver. Like other forms of interval training, it’s entirely possible to get as much if not more cardiovascular conditioning in 10-15 minutes than you’d get from a much longer session of slower cardio (depending on the intensity and effort levels).

2. Stair sprinting is engaging. Many people get bored doing long slow to medium intensity cardio sessions. This is a great way to break up the monotony of traditional cardio workouts. Even though it’s tough, it’s actually kind of fun.

3. Stair sprinting is incredible for leg development. As a bodybuilder, I like to look at all types of training not only in terms of conditioning, fat loss and health, but also whether they will add or detract from the physique. I find that brief but intense stair workouts are amazing for leg development - quads, hamstrings, glutes and even your calves. In fact, I started training on the stairs more than 20 years ago, and I always considered it as much if not more of a leg workout than anything else.

4. Stair sprinting can be done outside. If you have access to stadium steps, as opposed to just a stairwell, you can enjoy the sun and fresh air.

How to integrate stair running into your training program
If you’re an overachiever type, you might be tempted to do these sprint workouts in addition to your current strength training and cardio workload.

However, keep in mind that intensity and duration are inversely proportional. When you do high intensity cardio or all out sprints, you are condensing more work into less time. That means the best part is, you can do a brief but intense stair workout instead of one of your long cardio sessions rather than in addition to them.
Recommendation: Start with one session per week, then progress to two if you choose.

You can do traditional cardio the other days of the week if you want or need additional calorie-burning. Lower intensity cardio in between weight training and interval workouts can also serve as active recovery.
Not everyone has access to a full flight of stadium steps, as you might find at a local University. Running flights of stairs in a high rise is another effective and no-cost way to train on stairs. Although you can’t truly sprint with twists and turns on each floor, you can jog/run.

No stairs? Hills will get the job done too and they may provide you with more flexibility in the length/duration of your intervals. I’ve found some big hills at just the right grade of incline that I can do 30-45 second runs up, with about 90-120 seconds walk down. Grassy hills are nice, when available, as they spare you some of the impact from running on the concrete.

Sprinting up stairs is not for everyone. If you have a history of health problems or orthopedic issues, check with your doctor before doing any kind of high intensity training and of course, don’t train through the pain of injury. If you are significantly overweight, it may be a challenge just to walk up stairs, let alone run up, not to mention it might create undue stress on your joints. But as you get lighter and fitter, it’s a challenge you might slowly work toward.

Be sure to build up gradually and adjust the workout based on your current health and fitness level. You could start with as few as 4-6 rounds and build up from there. You can also start with jogging up the stairs, then progress to running, then move to sprints. Be sure you are fully prepared and warmed up before attempting all out sprints as sprinting when unprepared is a notorious source of hamstring pulls.

Some coaches believe that running uphill is safer than sprinting flat surfaces. Writing for Staley Training.com, Coach Steven Morris says, “Another great reason to hill sprint: even an athlete with horrendous running form will be safe running hills. This is simply because the hill does NOT allow the athlete to over-stride nor does it allow them to reach top speed, both major factors in hamstring injuries.”

Stair sprinting is a perfect complement to the cardio portion in my Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle program. If you’re healthy and already fit, try this advanced interval workout and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the results!

Train hard and expect success!

Tom Venuto, author of
Burn The Fat Feed The Muscle

Founder & CEO of
Burn The Fat Inner Circle

 

About the Author:

Tom Venuto is the author of the #1 best seller, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle: Fat Burning Secrets of the World’s Best Bodybuilders and Fitness Models. Tom is a lifetime natural bodybuilder and fat loss expert who achieved an astonishing 3.7% body fat level without drugs or supplements. Discover how to increase your metabolism and burn stubborn body fat, find out which foods burn fat and which foods turn to fat, plus get a free fat loss report and mini course by visiting Tom's site at: www.BurnTheFat.com