HIITing it where it counts

Another week, another workout plan...

I guess "month" would actually be better, since my workout schedule has been so sporadic the last 2+ months.

Anywho, the plan is go on a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) regimen. Wikipedia says:

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) involves a warmup period, several short, maximum-intensity efforts separated by moderate recovery intervals, and a cooldown period. The period of alternating effort and recovery intervals typically lasts a total of 15 minutes.

Studies have shown this method to be more effective at burning fat and maintaining, or building, muscle mass than high-volume, lower intensity aerobic work-outs. According to a study by King , HIIT increases the resting metabolic rate (RMR) for the following 24 hours due to Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, and may improve VO2 max. Traditionally, long aerobic workouts have been promoted as the best method to reduce fat, as fatty acid utilization usually occurs after at least 30 minutes of training. HIIT is somewhat counter intuitive in this regard, but has nonetheless been shown to burn fat more effectively. There may be a number of factors that contribute to this, including an increase in RMR, and possibly other physiological effects.

Generally sprinting is the HIIT workout of choice, but it can work with any cardio activity, so naturally my first stab at it was on the erg (rower). I suppose I've done this in the past with spring workouts for ultimate, but those tended to be heavy on 400s, which are a bit too long for HIIT. Series of 100s and 200s would be better for that, from what I gather.

So today's workout was a couple of chest exercises before hitting the erg. A brief warmup, then 5 300m sprints. All my times were between 63 and 67 seconds, with the damper set on 4, 7, 10, 2 and 5. I think I like the 4&5 settings the best, as it provided the best balance between resistance and speed. I was hoping to get one more in, but I was fairly gassed.

A second interesting bit (after the little effect the damper setting had on times or calories burned) was how much extra effort I had to exert in order to speed up by a whopping 8%. I can do 3 1000 meter reps at a 2 minute pace. My pace for a much shorter distance was just under 1:50. Part of the problem though was my form went to hell--my strokes per minute went up quite a bit (25 to low 30s i think) without the same impact on pace, which means I was shorting the stroke a bit, and/or not getting enough recovery to make a powerful next stroke.

The plan is to do this 3x a week, with a couple of lifts before hand. I'm actually getting close to my target (165), but I'm not sure I'm getting there in a good way, as I think recent loss has been mostly the good gains I made over the summer. But bulking/cutting is a different topic...