Since I am studying High Intensity Interval Training in a quest to transcend the hype I'm keen to fiddle with what I currently do.
After reading Hill Fit by Chris Highcock (review pending in later post) I'm inspired to experiment.
Nonetheless, I suspect that my current version of HIIT sessions -- short, intense and sharp -- is the form that best suits me and better serves what I seek to achieve.
However, while I love boxing the bag and kickbiking under strict HITT protocols, lifting kettlebells is not so user friendly. To achieve the max you need to lift fast and sharp -- squeezing as many reps into your 20 second window of effort as you can.
The problem is that this is dangerous. You trade form for effort. You maybe don't lift correctly or consciously, and you open yourself up to the chance of injury.
Since I still want to lift dem bells and make kettelbelling a key part of what I do, I've tweaked the kettlebell session times by doubling them.
40 second effort/20 second rest. That is: [40:20] x 8
I may have to play around with this regime a bit in order to get it right -- but the main game is to do slower and more controlled lifts which require a more careful muscle engagement. That's the intention, anyway -- the plan. So my session on the bells will last 9 minutes rather than 4.5. I may have to extend that timing, but we'll see.
Once a week should see me doing this and on the 2 day separation between HITTs I'll do boxing one day, and kickbike sprints on the other perhaps. And follow that with a longer session on the kettlebells.
Just to complicate things further it may be better to run my kickbike interval according to the Little Method: [60:75] x 12 . But that requires much more time -- 27 minutes -- to complete.
Three sessions per week: roughly 5 minutes : 5 minutes : 10 minutes -- totalling 20 minutes/week. And that may even be over training!
Among that I'd like to be able to include a long kickbike ride each week -- because I enjoy that so much . At the moment the limit of my range is 15 km (Swan Lake and back) but maybe I can extend this. The complication is that I love Swan Lake so much because it is such a great commune with the local environment -- often as not, when I do it, at dawn or soon after.
This isn't exercise so much as something else and one of the great things about deploying HIIT principles is that you can separate 'exercise' and 'fitness' from this other inspirational and lifestyle stuff. My preference you see and my aspiration -- depending on my health that day -- is to kickbike every morning.
That's been so very important to me these last two years. That physiological window first thing in the morning enables me to do more regardles of what the rest of the day may be like inside my body.
