The FastDay Forum

I'm with you on the HIIT and also weight training. I do kettle bells a couple of times a week and also do intervals on a treadmill - 30 seconds flat out - 30 seconds recovery for 10 minutes - job done!! I am 54 and look better now than I did 20 years ago - still need to lose a bit of weight and would like to reduce my body fat but all in all feel better for the exercise and not having to put in hours in the gym!!

Snap! Re the calories - that sounds quite possible, but as Caroline says there is the afterburn to consider which surely must use at least that much again. And if you do it twice in a day that is say 100 calories burned, which isn't bad for 2 x 5 minutes time (2 x 1 minute proper exercise). Plus of course the other benefits (insulin response and VO2 max, the latter only if we are better responders than Dr M!) And we get warm...

Another good thing about doing HIIT on a fast day is that I cannot give in to the temptation to reward myself afterwards...

Indeed, I used the bike on a moderate resistance setting for a full hour and only used 200 cal.

Curious -- how hard do you push yourself with the 4 minutes of HIIT?

(Reviving this old topic to respond to this q because of relevance)

The short answer as Caroline I think has said recently (in another topic I guess) is that it is full on, you give it everything you've got.

I have now resumed my HIIT after testing my blood pressure - well within normal. So today I did it with a heart rate monitor chest strap (it=HIIT, that is, not anything more exciting). I take 5 minutes for the whole thing which includes 3 x 20 seconds of high intensity. It is maybe less than I should (views?) but too much warming up and cooling down would bore me:

40 secs warm up (gentle pedalling, machine on lowest setting)
20 secs 1st burst (full on, machine on highest setting)
80 secs gentle
20 secs 2nd burst
100 secs gentle
20 secs 3rd burst
20 secs 'cool down'

So at end of 1st burst my HR is 110, at end of 2nd burst it is 140, at end of 3rd burst it is 160. And the machine tells me I burned 35-40 calories, plus whatever I gain from the 'afterburn'.

I'm following this hiit programme

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ultimat ... ogram.html

I'm just about to start week three. I do it three times a week on my non fasting days. I also walk for about an hour everyday.

I think it is helping to boost my weight loss and I'm enjoying it too.

[carorees]

Dominic...those are about my heart rates too according to the bike's pulse monitor and calorie burn too. I can't put the machine on the highest setting though or I just grind to a halt!! I have it on around setting 5 (of 8). Judging from DrM's use of the exercise bike on the TV programme I don't think the amount of warm up/cool down time matters too much. I did find that if I got straight off the bike afterwards I would feel a bit light-headed so now I do about a minute of cool down. Legs are still like jelly afterwards...whereas 30 mins of swimming front crawl leaves me feeling fine!

Interesting! I tried it again today but I had done some press-ups a few minutes before so my pulse was already elevated at over 100. This time my pulse peaked shortly after each burst at 160 / 167 / 167. And I seemed to get a sweat up which I have not noticed before (and is not convenient!)

I am certainly exhausted afterwards though to be honest I think I have recently been giving it about 95% rather than 100%. I have been a teensy bit nervous, but will try to push harder next time!

Just read this through and thought I should point out to anyone browsing here that I am talking about HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) on a cycle machine and not anything else...

Caroline is your machine's pulse monitor any good? Mine is absolute rubbish, worse than useless because it is quite misleading. The chest strap I trust though.

I max out at 175, slightly over one of those (x - age) guidelines. Polar HRM with chest strap.

I am anaemic, so have to pump blood lite at full tilt to deliver the oxygen. My fitness is 33 ml/kg/min peak VO2, as 25 a year ago.

Can someone please give me an example of HIIT with no bike or other equipment?

TML, I googled and found a link here.

Phil, how do you measure your VO2? I would be interested to measure mine, not least to see if I am a non-responder (like Dr M) or a super-responder.

17 minutes? That would kill my joints. I thought it was something like 3 or 4 minutes...

You don't believe everything you read on the internet do you TML?

I do 3 x 20 seconds, that was as done by Dr M in a different Horizon programme and is I guess the bare minimum, but it did work for improving some of his health markers. Not for his VO2 max because he was, unfortunately for him, a 'non-responder', but it should work for most people to some degree anyway - as it appears to have done for PhilT. And better VO2 max is supposed to be good for all of us, not just for athletes.

Anyone thinking of trying HIIT should probably read the Andrew Marr topic too...

Phil, how do you measure your VO2? I would be interested to measure mine, not least to see if I am a non-responder (like Dr M) or a super-responder.

I've had it measured twice with the proper kit (face mask flowmeter and O2 / CO2 analyser). Sports science centres / colleges etc do it.

Prior to that I got a pretty good estimate with a walking test, there's also the "bleep test" method - see http://www.brianmac.co.uk/vo2max.htm

I originally did the one mile walk test http://www.brianmac.co.uk/rockport.htm

So today I did it with a heart rate monitor chest strap (it=HIIT, that is, not anything more exciting). I take 5 minutes for the whole thing which includes 3 x 20 seconds of high intensity. It is maybe less than I should (views?) but too much warming up and cooling down would bore me:

40 secs warm up (gentle pedalling, machine on lowest setting)
20 secs 1st burst (full on, machine on highest setting)
80 secs gentle
20 secs 2nd burst
100 secs gentle
20 secs 3rd burst
20 secs 'cool down'

So at end of 1st burst my HR is 110, at end of 2nd burst it is 140, at end of 3rd burst it is 160. And the machine tells me I burned 35-40 calories, plus whatever I gain from the 'afterburn'.

I'm glad I checked back on this topic and thanks for answering my question. PhilT's 20s up, 10s down times 8 reps in 4 minutes was consistent with a more-recent article I read on the subject. I was wondering if the up-interval being longer than the down-interval was important, where the idea was to ratchet up your BP until you hit near the maximum heart rate for a good portion of the last 3 or 4 intervals. Your longer down-periods between ups is interesting, too -- wondering if it makes a difference.

I have a book on running that recommends a form of medium intensity interval training where you run at your "max VO2 pace" which they define as the hardest you can sustain for an 11 minute run. (Not sure where they came up with the 11 minute number, but there it is...) You run at that pace for about 3 to 4 minutes and then you jog at a recovery pace for about the same time and then you repeat that interval 6-8 times. Keep in mind this is geared at 10k runners and marathoners.

I've been trying to do something similar but when I heard about HIIT it sounded similar enough but also dramatically different because the intensity is much, much higher but it's also over in just a few minutes.

I can do the VO2 workout on a treadmill but I don't feel safe sprinting for 20 seconds and then trying to slow down for 10s... I may just go outside now that it's warming up and try doing a HIIT out there. I suppose I could try the stationary bike only because I need something I'm able to do once the weather gets cold again.

Interesting stuff.

back to the OP: the evolution argument makes sense to me if you're talking about hunters but not gatherers. I suspect early humans got plenty of lower intensity exercise from gathering as well.

17 minutes? That would kill my joints. I thought it was something like 3 or 4 minutes...

Tabata is 4 minutes, that do you
20 seconds the absolute hardest you can go, 10 seconds recovery. Repeat. Do it 8 times total. You can do the same exercise, or mix it up. I usually alternate between squats and box jumps. Count how many you do of each, and make sure you push push push yourself. If you don't feel like you're going to die in the last few 20 secs, you're not pushing hard enough.

You can do this with sprinting, squats (deep), jump squats, box jumps, lunges, skipping rope, leap sprints, anything that uses as many muscles as possible and gets your heart rate up.