Good Ole' Fashion HIIT

For those of you who don't know, HIIT = high intensity interval training. Body Rock sometimes feels like HIIT x 10. The latest Body Rock workout looks like it would feel this way. It also involves a lot of jumping, which is out for me because of my right knee and ankle. Workouts like this I sometime replace with another Body Rock workout, but other times I replace them with HIIT on an elliptical or stationary bike. This lets me keep the the intensity of the Body Rock workouts without hurting myself.

For a great article on the benefits of HIIT, read this article by my good friend and author MariAnne Anderson.

The gym at work has an elliptical I like. It's a CYBEX 750. The resistance has settings from 1-100 (I think) and it has handles so it's a full body workout. A common criticism of doing HIIT more than once or twice a week is that it leads to over training the legs. The CYBEX is still an intense leg workout, but it hits the major upper body muscle groups, too.

Here is what I have planned.

TIME @ RESISTANCE
WARM UP - 5 minutes
60 sec @ 20
120 sec @ 25
120 sec @ 30

INTERVALS - 12 ROUNDS - 18 minutes
30 sec:60 sec @ 30

COOL DOWN - 12 minutes
180 sec @ 25
240 sec @ 20
300 sec @ 15

The reason my cool down is so long is so that I can burn off any pesky free-fatty acids that have been liberated by the HIIT.