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