HIIT Station’s guide to HIIT training

If you lead a busy lifestyle and don’t have much free time for exercise, high intensity interval training, or HIIT as it’s commonly termed, may be the workout style for you. 

Not only are HIIT workouts a fast and effective way to improve your fitness, regular HIIT training provides numerous health benefits including improved cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, metabolic health and brain health. 

If you’ve never tried HIIT training before, here’s our guide to help you smash your first workout. 

What is HIIT? 

High intensity interval training is a full-body cardio workout that involves repeatedly exercising at high intensity for 30 seconds to several minutes followed by a short recovery period. 

How can I start HIIT? 

Prior to starting any kind of new exercise regime, it’s important to seek advice from a fitness or healthcare professional to make sure that it’s suitable for you. 

Once you have the green light to start your HIIT journey, one of the best ways to start is in a group fitness setting like the one we offer at HIIT Station. We are a specialised HIIT gym, with all of our locations offering qualified class coaches and a fun, comfortable community environment making it the perfect place to start your HIIT training journey. If you’re new to fitness or haven’t trained for a while don’t stress! Our class coaches can modify our classes from beginner to advanced HIIT workouts to suit you and your current fitness level. 

How often should you do HIIT? 

The number of HIIT workouts you should do each week depends on where you currently are in your fitness journey and what other training you’re doing. We’d suggest starting out with one session per week to ease your body into this style of training. When you feel ready, you can start adding in further sessions but it’s important to spread these sessions out to allow enough time for your body to recover. 

What is the ideal HIIT workout length? 

HIIT workouts can be as short or as long as you like but the usual duration of a HIIT session is between 30-60 minutes with a warmup and cool down period included in this time. When starting your HIIT training journey, it’s important to start off slowly with a work-to-recovery ratio that suits you and your current fitness level. When you are new to this type of training, we recommend using a HIIT ratio with longer recovery phases than work phases. As an example, 20 seconds of work, 40 seconds of rest. As your fitness level improves, you can work up to a longer work phase with less recovery time. 

HIIT workout styles 

Tabata 

A Tabata workout involves 20 seconds of maximum effort ‘work’ time, followed by 10 seconds of rest. This is usually repeated for four to eight rounds. 

Usually, each round will last for 4 minutes, meaning you will repeat an exercise for 4 rounds before moving on to the next exercise. Although 4 minutes doesn’t seem like much, trust us when we say that you will definitely be working up a sweat using this HIIT style! 

EMOM 

EMOM stands for “every minute on the minute”. During this HIIT style, an EMOM workout is broken up into one-minute intervals where your aim is to complete a specific number of reps before the next minute ticks over. 

The catch? You’re only allowed to rest if you complete all of the reps before the 60 seconds is up. If you don’t finish the reps, you start them over at the beginning of the new minute. 

AMRAP 

AMRAP can mean two different things – ‘as many reps as possible’ or ‘as many rounds as possible’. In this HIIT style workout, you’ll repeat an exercise or a number of different exercises as many times as you can within a specified timeframe. AMRAP circuit training is a popular way to complete this workout. 

Try HIIT with a specialised HIIT gym 

Here at HIIT Station, we offer a whopping 20 different types of HIIT classes! 

Our amazing HIIT gym is designed to support you as you start your fitness journey, and we offer Beginners Strength classes every week to make starting a new training style less daunting. All HIIT Station’s Beginners Strength sessions are completely free and involve our experienced class trainers breaking down the basics of strength training to a small group of clients. These classes are the perfect opportunity to learn the basics of HIIT training before attending a proper class, with all experience levels and fitness levels welcome to attend. 

If you’re unable to attend one of our Beginners Strength sessions do not stress! You can attend any of our Full Hour Strength classes and our experienced class coaches can modify exercises to suit your fitness level. You’ll be completing advanced HIIT workouts in no time. 

You can book your first class with HIIT Station by clicking here and selecting the HIIT Station closest to you. Your first 3 classes with us are absolutely free, so you’ve got nothing to lose! Get in touch with us today to find out more.