File :-(, x, )
How long for HIIT? Anonymous
I'm kind of confused on this one. I've heard with HIIT you're supposed to go twenty minutes total, but then I've also heard you're supposed to just stay at four minutes no matter how long you've been doing it. What gives, /fit/?
>> Anonymous
4 minutes? where was that? nevermind.

if you're starting out, do a few (hard-recover) cycles. For the first few weeks you should be able to increase either the time spent on the hard component of the cycle or increase the number of cycles. i usually stop when i get around 15 minutes of total time spent doing thism but i'm not wikkid hardcore either.
>> Anonymous
The kids saying 20 minutes are idiots that don't know what they're talking about. 4 minutes of balls to the wall sprinting usually leaves someone who's in decent shape wiped out. Just keep increasing the sets until you feel like you're going to die then stop.
>> Anonymous
4 minutes is tabata protocol for sprints, or weightlifting
>> Anonymous
The only thing is, I use a bike machine. There's nowhere to run around here, unfortunately. I don't know if I'm less wiped out because of it or not, but even though I go as hard as I can, I still feel like I can do more after four minutes. But I'll just keep increasing them. I wasn't sure if it was actually worse to lengthen the time since it strayed away from the tabata method or not.
>> Anonymous
IIRC Tabata et al. did the study on bicycle machines.
>The exhaustive intermittent training consisted of seven to eight sets of 20-s exercise at an intensity of about 170% of VO2max with a 10-s rest between each bout.