For someone who has never done it before, how would you start it off? How much time sprinting vs "resting? How much rounds? I'm starting it this Monday, will only be doing 1x a week for now, slowly building up to 3 times a week thoughout my cut.
I don't recommend HIIT if you plan on cutting to very lean levels - say sub 10%.
IME it simply has more negatives than positives - eats into recovery, potentially disturbs resistance training performance, doesn't burn more cals vs longer LISS/moderate cardio sessions, etc.
Now if your an athlete and maintaining overall performance is the main goal while dieting - then that's another story
I've heard that the true benefit of HIIT is how it boosts up the metabolism for the rest of the day, along with the fact that HIIT breaks down the fat into your blood stream, and then you do a more moderate, steady state cardio to burn it off. Is it true? Or just broscience?
The "afterburn" from HIIT is true but its drastically overstated - we're talking about an extra 50-100cals. Woopee.
The rest of the stuff about doing steady state to burn off the fat in your bloodstream or whatever is broscience.
Basically a 20 min HIIT session burns 200cals plus an extra 50-100 post session = 250-300
A basic 30-40 min moderate/LISS session = 250-300
The whole point of cardio when dieting is to burn off some extra cals right? So why work twice as hard to burn the same amount of cals?
Again, IMO HIIT is not worth it when cutting.
Sprinters body mass vs. Long distance runners body mass. That's all I'll say. End of argument.
I think it's biggest advantage is simple the economics of it. Only two reason I ever did it.
1. Cardio is boring as hell and it takes much less time. I don't have 40 minutes to devote to it.
2. It's a very fast warm up in the winter time. 2 or 3 40 yard prowler pushes gets my legs ready to go.
The best answer I have seen to the age old question of what's the best type of cardio training is - the kind you will actually do.
Wut
10 characters
I don't recommend HIIT if you plan on cutting to very lean levels - say sub 10%.
IME it simply has more negatives than positives - eats into recovery, potentially disturbs resistance training performance, doesn't burn more cals vs longer LISS/moderate cardio sessions, etc.
Now if your an athlete and maintaining overall performance is the main goal while dieting - then that's another story
I don't recommend HIIT if you plan on cutting to very lean levels - say sub 10%.
IME it simply has more negatives than positives - eats into recovery, potentially disturbs resistance training performance, doesn't burn more cals vs longer LISS/moderate cardio sessions, etc.
Now if your an athlete and maintaining overall performance is the main goal while dieting - then that's another story
So general consensus is to forget about HIIT, and just add in more LISS sessions or something (I'm already doing it once a week, will probably add 1 or 2 more sessions this week, doing it fasted, first thing in the morning by the way). Thanks guys. And yes, I'm planning on hitting 8-10% bf before going back to bulking, and I guess once I start approaching that level of leanness will be hard with all the workouts and low calories already factored in.