HIIT stands for high intensity interval training. HIIT and continuous aerobic exercise are two methods for training your cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Both forms of exercise are efficient for building stamina and burning calories. Each method has its advantages and recommended guidelines.
Aerobics Overview
Traditional aerobic exercise is any activity that is rhythmic in nature and repeated for a moderate duration, such as 20 minutes or more. Examples of aerobic activities include walking, running, cycling, stair climbing, rowing and swimming. In order for you to be able to maintain your intensity for a longer duration, your effort level may need to be in the moderate range. The longer your duration, the greater the number of calories you will burn. One of the benefits of continuous aerobic training is that your body will learn to utilize more fat for energy in order to spare the carbohydrates that are stored in your muscles.
Aerobics Guidelines
For moderately paced aerobic activity, the 2009 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend 150 to 300 minutes a week. This can be combined with more vigorous activity, such as HIIT exercise. With more vigorous exercise, your total weekly exercise time may not need to be as high.
HIIT Overview
HIIT workout sessions incorporate relatively short bouts of high intensity exercise followed by recovery periods of a lower intensity. Due the vigorous level of intensity, HITT sessions may be shorter in duration than some of your continuous aerobic workouts. A HIIT session, however, can burn just as many calories or more within a shorter period.
HIIT Guidelines
There are a variety of ways to outline your HIIT sessions. You can use any of the traditional aerobic activities and alter the intensity level by moving faster or going uphill. To categorize your intensity level, it can be helpful to use a scale of perceived exertion. For example, on a scale of one to 10, one would be resting or no exertion and 10 would be maximal effort. For your high intensity bouts, you’ll want to exercise at a level of seven or eight. Your recovery bouts should be around a level three. You can play with the length of the work to rest periods and how many repetitions of each interval that you perform. One session could include five to 10 repeats of one minute of high intensity exercise, followed by three minutes of active recovery. You could also make your high intensity segments longer and the recovery periods shorter. Limit your HIIT sessions to once or twice a week as you will need longer recovery time between these workouts.
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