The amount of people who use high intensity interval training (HIIT) in recent years has grown rapidly as people move away from the old traditional execises like steady running and cycling in favour of this relatively new type of training that really is not up to scratch.

Here are the 9 reasons why HIIT sucks!

1.  It’s not liked it’s based on any real scientific data!  The studies conducted by Tabbata et al  showed that doing steady long durnation training like running and cycling lead to massive fitness and fat loss benefits compared with the HIIT group who hardly improved at all!!

2.  Another really annoying thing about high intensity training is that you have to have specialist pieces of equipment.  You have to be a member of a gym or health lub to actually do HIIT, unlike other training that can be carried out anywhere in the world with minimal amounts of equipment!!

3.  If fat burning is an issue for you then avoid HIIT like the plague, you’ll never get any real benefits from doing this type of intense exercise.  Doing long slow boring cardio will give you the best fat burning potential!!

4.  If you have hours to work out in the gym then HIIT may not be the best for you, it takes ages to do a full workout.  When you consider that other sessions can be done in a as little as 20  minutes you need to make sure that the high intensity sessions are never used unless you camp out at the gym!!

5.  Another physiological reason for avoiding this type of intense workout is that it really doesn’t do much for your aerobic capacity.  When this increases your heart and lungs work more efficiently, HIIT really does not do this!

6.  It’s not adaptable.  Interval training is a one size fits all type of workout.  there is absoloutley know ability to adapt exercises or workout times to match the individual person doing it.  Wouldn’t it be great if it was applicable to a whole variety of the population!

7.  It’s rubbish a delivering results in a only a handful of sessions, it takes ages to feel the benefit.

8.  Some other programs have some really simple and cheap apps that make it easier to get variety in the workouts.   There is one on the iPhone that costs less than the cost of a chocolate bar – I wish they’d bring out something for HIIT.

9.  Unlike other types of exercise intensity training, you need to do HIIT at least a couple of times a day to get any results, can you imagine using other techniques where you could workout everyother day and still get long term results.

Ok, so I was lying really, HIIT doesn’t suck and is actually one of the best forms of exercise you can do (if you’re up to it).  Every point I made obviously is one of the benefits of HIIT and therefore makes HIIT one of the best fat loss training tools.

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I have recently just joined one of the big gym chains, here in the UK.

One of the things that I am surprised about is the number of people who still go and do their cardio training and then go and lift weights, when it should really be weights before cardio.

I’ve talked about this before but it is worth reiterating.

You really are better off doing your weight training first as by definition lifting weights is a high intensity task and doing cardio is a low intensity task.

By doing your cardio first you are using up the valuable and limited sugar supplies that the body needs to lift weights.  You can do cardio on either sugar or fat but only sugar can be used for the weight training element.

Also it takes 15-25 minutes (depending on fitness level, the fitter the quicker) to move fat from where it’s stored to the muscles where it can be burnt up.  So by warming up and lifting weights first you are releasing the fat and then have it available to start burning as soon as you start your cardio training.

Until next time, train hard, train smart, make every rep count.

Alex

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