HIIT It

Over the last few years, HIIT has become a buzz word used in the marketing of every other fitness class or product. And with good reason. But what does HIIT mean?

An acronym for High-Intensity Interval Training, the term HIIT is used to describe workouts that contain short bursts of intense exercise, followed by timed periods of recovery. The idea is to push your body to its limit for a short period of time, followed by a period of recovery before another intense effort. This pattern is repeated several times.

The easiest way to define an intense period is with the assistance of a heart rate monitor. An “all-out” effort being a period of exercise in which your heart rate is at 85–95% of its maximum. (A rough way to calculate maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age). Alternatively, you can use your own intuition to judge maximum effort.

The secret to HIIT’s effectiveness is EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption). Essentially, HIIT works your body harder than regular exercise and therefore your body takes more time to recover from a HIIT workout. Whilst in a state of recovery your body is working harder and therefore burning more calories than it would otherwise. A 2019 article published by the British Medical Journal found that HIIT training not only helps reduce body fat when compared to MICT (Moderate Intensity Continuous Training) but that HIIT can also act as a “protective factor against premature death” when compared to MICT.

A further benefit of HIIT is that it takes substantially less time to complete than longer, moderately paced exercise. Making HIIT ideal for anyone who struggles to make time for exercise in their daily routine. There are several reasons that an indoor rowing machine is an ideal tool for use in HIIT training:

• Rowing is a total body workout using – each stroke on the rowing machine uses every large muscle group in the body (roughly 85% of total muscle mass).
• It is low impact – rowing puts much less strain on the back and joints compared to running and other high impact cardio exercises.
• Rowing can easily be interspersed with other exercises to make a HIIT circuit.
• When not in use the rowing machine can be lifted away on end in just a few seconds for space-saving storage.