Advanced HIIT Workouts
1. Sprints
Sprints are good for developing speed, strength, power, muscle, conditioning, fitness and enhancing fat loss. A sprinting workout revolves around doing repeated sprints of 50, 100 or even 200m with a brief period of rest between sprints.
Now, while they appear to be some sort of magic cure to address many areas of your health and fitness you have to be aware that they are very intense and very taxing on the body. They require a good warmup beforehand, good running/sprint technique and good (ie; supportive and cushioning) running shoes. So the normal rules apply, get yourself down to a specialist running shop to get some proper shoes and certainly think about getting some athletics coaching to hone your sprinting form. It may sound excessive but it is the best way to prevent injury and/or improve your performance.
An example of a beginners sprinting workout...
Week 1: 1-2 Sessions of 5 x 100m
Week 2: 1-2 Sessions of 6 x 100m
Week 3: 1-2 Sessions of 7 x 100m
Week 4: 1-2 Sessions of 8 x 100m
Week 5: 1-2 Sessions of 9 x 100m
Week 6: 1-2 Sessions of 10 x 100m
As said already, sprints are very demanding on your body so it is paramount that you gradually ease yourself into a routine and gradually increase the intensity of the sessions. Of course, once you have established a good level of fitness it is time to develop your programme, so you could think about increasing the amount of sessions per week to 3, for example, perform your sprints up a hill (ie; 'Hill Sprints'), wear a weighted vest, increase the distance, shorten the distance but increase the amount of sprints, etc.
Of course this workout can be applied to any exercise, cycling, rowing, swimming, etc, don't believe you're restricted by what is available to you.
2. Tabata
Another great high intensity interval training method proven to significantly increase someone's fitness, improve someone's strength/speed, increase someone's muscle mass, lose fat, etc.
Again, the same principles as above apply, it is intense, it is very demanding on your body, you will need correct technique, a decent warmup, the right gear, etc to help prevent possible injury.
Tabata revolves around sets of 20s high intensity intervals, followed by 10s active recovery periods. These sets are performed 8 times then followed by a 60s rest period.
So an example routine would involve 1-3 workouts a week of one 5 min period. Of course, as you get fitter there is the option to increase the intensity by doing multiple 5 min periods per workout, or any of the options mentioned above.
Again, Tabata can, and is, used in many modalities, more so than sprints. It has been applied to the field of resistance training where you pick several compound movements (eg; squat, deadlift, lunges, stepups, bench, dips, overhead press, pushups, chinups, pullups, etc) and perform a 'Tabata' for each individual exercise chosen.
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NB: The nature of these workouts makes it very difficult if not impossible to perform at such a high intensity regularly. I know many will be mesmerised by their potential and think 'I know, I'll do Tabata/Sprints every day and lose ????lbs', WRONG. If you are training at the correct, high, intensity you will greatly increase your risk of overtraining and injury.
On another note it works both ways, if you find you can perform sprints/Tabata comfortably, every day, you are clearly not working at a high enough intensity.