Do you even HIIT?

Hiit training has been shown to be very beneficial. The benefits are improved fitness, fat loss, time efficient and you can even do it at home with no equipment!

However, what I've learnt is if you aren't tracking your workout then how do you know if you're even doing HIIT?

If you look at my heart rate zones here you'll notice a few things. 1) The first green zone is close to where I'm meant to be (anaerobic zone - 80-90% of max HR). This is where you feel like you start to breathe heavy and you can feel your muscles fatigue.

2) The second green zone is close as well - both were done doing jump squats. **In an ideal world I would have liked my HR to be slightly higher.

3) Here I went from my rest period (you can see a very low HR **Blue**) straight into jump lunges. You can actually see that I didn't spark my heart rate high enough to reach my 80-90% zone. However, that doesn't mean it wasn't hard! I actually felt fatigued before I could drive my heart rate up.

4) Here I do pushups (because they're a great exercise too) again, I never get my heart rate up high enough to get into the HIIT zone! (doesn't mean it wasn't semi challenging though).

5) Lastly I ramp up... So instead of going from a rest period I go into a slight jog (just to boost HR slightly **Green**). I then go into jump squats again (and I really pushed it this time). You can see I start off right in the zone!! However, my HR shoots right through and almost hits MAX! Too hard too soon! If you've ever gassed out or felt sick doing exercise, this is usually what happens. Your HR shoots up too quickly and generally it isn't maintainable.

So what can you take away from this? Track and monitor your HR! That way you can modify the exercise to have;

1) Appropriate rests for you. 2) Hit the right HR zones for you.

3) Stop feeling like you need to puke! and start actually doing some conditioning work.

3) Figure out which exercises are effective and get rid of the ones that aren't.

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