HIIT

High Intensity Interval Training

High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT is a technique where you go all out a maximum effort for a relatively short period of time and then have a complete rest or very slow activity. HIIT activities get your Heart Rate up high and then allow for rest to recover but not enough rest to fully recover, so your HR remains up during the workout.

HIIT workouts generally can be done anywhere as they don't require equipment and as they are full-on efforts, are not done at a sustainable pace, so you will need rest. As they have a big impact on your body they are not recommended to be done every day.

As you start using HIIT in your training, you need to consider the FITT principle here - How Frequently are you going to use them? How intense will you work (will each interval be 10 seconds or 50 seconds?) What type of work out (swim/cycle/ equipment is required) and How long will you do them for (4 cycles or 10 cycles?).

In our Lessons in the pool this is what we covered:

Lesson 1:

Initially we completed one 50m FreeStyle that we tried to do as quickly as we could. This gave us a baseline time to work with. Coach Nic told us that this is the best way to work at intensity with age-group swimmers still working on learning pace and finding pace as we grow and get stronger/more powerful in our swimming.

We then added 5 seconds to this time. So if you swam a 40 second 50m FS time, your target time for the set is now 45 seconds.

We then took our Pulse. As we did each 50m we tried to take our pulse at about the same time in the rest cycle to have good data about how we were recovering.

We then gave ourselves roughly 1 minute recovery but rounded this up or down based on the 15s clock timer for ease of knowing when to swim.

For a 40sec swimmer this looked like:

45secs for each 50m rep
pulse taken at the 1m00s mark
Start next rep at 1m45s on the clock.

Students recorded all of this data on their own board to use for comparisons for later HIIT training using a different stroke and for discussion in our conversations.

To see how our body recovered, we took our pulse at the end of the set (2m00s after last rep/rest cycle) to see if our Heart rate dropped back or stayed high.

We then cooled down for 100m.

Students discussed how they felt during the process (physical and emotional) to better understand how this training can make us feel.

Lesson 2

Students have been completing a blog post (#1) from our Assessment and then we:

Warmed up (teacher led today to give some more ideas and suggestions to students)
Coach Nic talked about Stroke Count and Distance-per-stroke (DPS). Students decided to either repeat FS or to try Breaststroke and completed 1 x 50m and recorded their time, HR and stroke count.
Elite swimmers maintain very similar DPS when they are sprinting and working on middle distance swims. This demonstrates strong ability to maintain DPS (efficiency) over distance in the pool. We wanted to focus on this today.
Students completed 5-7 reps using:
- 50m stroke time PLUS 5 seconds/ 1 minute or so rest between reps
- Stroke Count MINUS 4 (so if I swim BR with 26 strokes per 50m, I am aiming for 22 (or 11 per 25m))
- Record Time/ HR (after 10s rest) and Stroke Count
Find your Average Stroke Count (ex 36 on Free Style) now do 1x maximum repeat of 50m at that stroke (hold Stroke Count and go to max pace).
Discuss what we noticed, observed and felt after this training set.
Cool Down and move into Choice Skilled practice (Dive/Turn/Push-off the wall etc)

More reading:

http://dailyburn.com/life/fitness/high-intensity-hiit-workout/ An article about HIIT with some examples.

https://www.fitnessblender.com/articles/what-is-hiit-and-how-do-i-use-it-in-my-training An explanation of HIIT and how it can help in your training cycle.

http://www.menshealth.co.uk/fitness/cardio-exercise/what-is-HIIT Men's Health Magazine article with the Benefits of HIIT

http://time.com/4893161/hiit-high-intensity-interval-training-exercise/ TIME Magazine article about benefits of HIIT training