10 minutes in, you start to wonder if you might throw up and whether you’ll ever be able to lift your arms above your head again. And that’s just after the bloody warm up.
Will the pain ever end? Will you ever be allowed to stop burpee-ing and squatting and lifting?
Fortunately, the point of high-intensity training is that’s it’s hard but it only lasts a short period of time. And the fact that it’s shorter than your average workout means that it can be more intense.
Using as much energy as possible in a short space of time is a dead effective way of burning fat.
(Picture: Metro)
But how long is too long?
Well, anything above 30 minutes and the workout isn’t intense enough.
Rachel Vaziralli, the creative manager of Equinox, says that often the term HIIT is used as a synonym for ‘hardcore’ – i.e. workouts that last over an hour.
‘If you can go longer than 30 minutes, you weren’t actually working hard enough,’ she tells Well and Good.
The whole point is to go so hard that you can’t sustain that level of intensity beyond half an hour.
Rachel says that if you keep trying to elongate HIIT sessions, then the body adapts and stops itself from exerting the amount of energy you want it to.
‘You’re spending more time than (necessary) for the same results.’
And overexerting yourself can leave you open to injury.
Saying that, however, workouts that last under 15 minutes probably won’t get your body up to maximum output either.
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