Top HIIT Workouts for Staying Active
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Time to read 9 min
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Time to read 9 min
To stay consistent with our fitness goals, we have to ensure we’re not just putting in the work during exercise but that we are also choosing the best exercise regimen for our goals.
Building a fitness routine that we can rely on is just as important to our physical health plan as the exercise itself. By structuring our workouts with the kinds of selective exercises that suit our needs, we’re not just setting a clear path forward but holding ourselves accountable.
Choosing the right workouts can be daunting. Whether we’re just beginning or taking the next step in our fitness journey, finding those exercises that deliver on our goals can be difficult when we’re in unfamiliar territory.
That’s why HIIT — high-intensity interval training — exercise strategies are becoming increasingly popular. They provide exercisers with a well-rounded, complete workout that engages our fitness goals in multiple ways.
Let’s look into this effective type of exercise, see what makes it so special, and the best HIIT workouts you can implement in your fitness routine.
To get a full grasp of high-intensity interval training and how it helps us, it’s important to understand how exercise affects our bodies.
The brilliance of HIIT is that it borrows the benefits of different exercise types and utilizes them for a complete workout. HIIT workouts aren’t exclusively aerobic or anaerobic exercise; they can be a little bit of both.
Let’s dive into aerobics and anaerobics to better understand what makes HIIT such a unique fitness option.
You may be familiar with aerobics , but what does it really mean?
The word comes from Greek, meaning “with oxygen.” The name aerobics then points to its defining features as an exercise: aerobics are exercises that rely primarily on oxygen to fuel our performance.
The body supplies us with energy in many ways. But when it comes to aerobic exercise, our body draws on the oxygen in our blood to propel our physical activity.
Aerobic exercises emphasize the importance of a good breathing strategy since we take in oxygen through the air we breathe. By having a strong breathing pattern, we can supply our body with the oxygen that powers us forward, which helps us get all the benefits that aerobic workouts bring to our fitness.
Aerobics exercises include many cardio workouts, like running, cycling, swimming, and sustained exercises over extended periods. Aerobics get our heart rates up and support cardiovascular health.
As we get into higher intensity aerobics like sprints, we begin to see how they merge into HIIT territory.
Anaerobics means without oxygen. If aerobics are sustained by oxygen, anaerobic exercises are characterized by using energy sources other than oxygen to fuel performance.
Because aerobics utilize a sustainable breathing pattern to power us forward, they tend to make for long-term exercise options. Anaerobics are completely different in this regard; they are much shorter term and feature short bursts of physical exertion.
Anaerobic generally target specific muscles in a short period of time.
As such, the energy propelling our performance is found more directly in our muscles. Latent energy stores in the muscles — carbs, proteins, and phosphocreatine, for example — allow our muscles to explode in their performance and accomplish higher intensity exercise faster.
Because of the draw from the energy stores in our muscles, we exhaust ourselves much faster than with aerobic exercise, meaning we have to take breaks and allow our body the opportunity to recover from this more intense level of exertion.
Examples of anaerobic exercise include heavy weight lifting, calisthenics, and HIIT.
High-intensity interval training mixes both aerobic exercises and anaerobics. With HIIT, it’s less about the type of exercise — whether it’s aerobic or anaerobic — but more so how it’s done.
The high intensity level of the exercise defines a HIIT session.
Going on a run, for example, is an aerobic exercise. But when you perform high-intensity sprints over a shorter period, you are doing both aerobic and anaerobic exercises.
In the sprinting example, your muscles may react similarly to anaerobic exercise; the high intensity of the sprint targets the stored energy in your leg muscles, meaning you're getting a full, well-rounded exercise.
HIIT exercises can last anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes. They often involve a circuit of different exercises that allow you to get a complete, fulfilling workout. For example, a circuit might include a steady movement from push-ups to pull-ups to jump rope.
The high intensity levels involved in HIIT mean that you’re blasting through your body’s energy stores, burning more calories, and working to build muscle in a shorter period of time.
Compared to other exercise types, HIIT may even be a more effective way to burn calories and achieve fat loss.
One study measured the calories burned during HIIT exercise compared to more conventional exercises. The results indicated that HIIT burned 25-30% more calories than weight training, running, or biking.
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What’s so fascinating about these results is that the particular HIIT activity in this study consisted of 20 seconds of intense, maximal effort with a rest period of 40 seconds afterward. The folks doing HIIT did one-third of the exercise that the aerobic exercisers did.
The structure of the HIIT workout translated to less time exercising while still generating better results from the exercise.
The high-intensity workout you get out of HIIT can help you achieve your weight loss goals, even with the shorter time spent working out.
Research indicates that HIIT helps us lose fat and slim down.
The maximal effort that sustains short bursts of high-intensity exercise burns through body fat fast, meaning that the same kind of workout one gets from moderate intensity can be achieved with less time working out.
The more muscle put on, the more fat you burn while you workout. Your Personalized Protein Blend can support muscle growth that helps you burn fat faster.
Long-term workouts, like aerobics, require oxygen to fuel our muscles. In order to train our endurance, we need to increase the oxygen consumption of our muscles. The more oxygen they get, the longer they can go.
HIIT has been shown to increase oxygen consumption in our muscles in a much shorter period of time than standard, long-term aerobic activity.
With less time working out, you can ensure that you can go even longer and get even more out of your workout with HIIT.
What makes HIIT so appealing to exercisers is the holistic approach it gives to our fitness goals. HIIT workouts don’t just help us reach our fitness goals; they help us get better at aerobic and anaerobic physical activities.
By doing more HIIT, you’re training yourself to perform better. That means you can get more out of your workout and properly yourself even further on your fitness journey.
Now that you have a better understanding of HIIT and the benefits it can bring to your fitness journey, let’s look into some specific examples of these workouts.
Here are a few of the most effective HIIT workouts you can implement into your fitness regimen.
Burpees are a perfect example of an all-in-one HIIT workout.
Burpees consist of four bodyweight movements for a full-body burn:
Jump
From a full, upright position, make a strong standing jump. Bring your arms up as you jump and raise them as high as you can above your head.
Squat
When you land on your feet after the jump, make one fluid movement into a squat to work your lower body. Maintain a stance where your set is just a bit wider than your shoulders. Landing from the jump and going into the squat will get the muscles in your glutes and legs burning fast.
Plank
Lower yourself from the squat, then switch into a plank position. Keep a straight back while you hop your legs back into the plank. You’ll get your core muscles fired up with this movement.
Push Up
From the plank position, do a push-up. This part of the burpee targets your upper body muscles, like your triceps and core.
From the push-up, snap back to plank, return to the squat and jump — that’s the complete circuit burpee that will activate virtually all your muscle groups.
Burpees are indeed intense. Do as many burpees as you can with good form. Around 5-10 reps can be enough for beginners.
Not all HIITs need to have the same multi-exercise flow that burpees do.
A more simple example of a HIIT workout is a sprinting routine.
To start, get warmed up with a jog.
Once you feel sufficiently warmed up, take anywhere from 10 to 15 seconds to sprint at your maximal effort with each step.
When you’ve done your allotted sprint, slow back down into a jog or walk for an extended rest period, anywhere from 1 to 3 minutes.
Go back to the sprint as many times as you can manage throughout your run.
A workout like this demonstrates that it's the high-intensity moments that define HIIT. For beginners just starting with HIIT, getting into the rhythm of high-intensity bursts and rest periods with sprints will train your endurance and the discipline that keeps you consistent with this exercise style.
What sets HIIT apart is that you can tailor your home workout to your specific needs.
As burpees demonstrate, HIIT can consist of various exercises that target specific muscles — burpees can even be included in more extensive HIIT circuits.
The modular nature of HIIT allows exercisers to be creative with how they pursue their fitness goals.
The exercises you can blend to craft a HIIT routine are almost limitless. Here are a few exercises you can chain together for a high-intensity exercise:
However you decide to put together your personalized HIIT exercise, remember that the key factor is the intensity you give. Going from jumping jacks to squats to push-ups becomes high intensity when you do them fluidly and with all your effort.
As the name suggests, HIITs are intense.
In order to ensure that you’re operating at your best, and to prevent your risk of injury, look into proper form for each exercise and supply yourself with the nutritional resources that sustain your efforts.
With the blast that HIIT gives to your muscles, you want to make sure that they have the energy they need to help you perform.
Your Personalized Pre-Workout Blend is full of rich nutrients that sustain your performance through HIIT circuits at any length.
One of the most effective ingredients in this blend is Creatine. Creatine has been reliably proven to boost our exercise performance. Creatine is an amino acid that becomes stored in the muscles as phosphocreatine, an energy source that will power your movements through HIIT workouts.
Supplemental creatine is one of the most effective ways to supply your body with this crucial performance booster.
Alongside a wide array of other Performance Boosts from Gainful that can sharpen up your workout, your Personalized Pre-Workout Blend is the complete package for aerobic and anaerobic activity.
Your fitness journey is a deeply personal experience. That’s why your supplement blend should be tailored to your exact needs.
Your activity level, experience level, and body type all inform the nutrient supply your body needs to make good on your goals.
You can take our quiz today to see what kind of blend best suits you.
Sources:
Aerobic Exercise | Cleveland Clinic
The benefits of anaerobic exercise | Piedmont
The Workout Debate: Experts Weigh in on Cardio VS. HIIT | Penn Medicine