Anyone that trains in our personal training gym knows that we are big on HIIT or high intensity interval training for cardio and fat burning but there is another reason we like this method of training. We like this method because we also work our abdominals during a HIIT session, effectively killing two birds with one stone. Using this methodology the old argument of “I don’t have time to do fat burning cardio and abdominal work” loses its relevancy.
We do offer two hour long HIIT sessions a week in which we program in multiple abdominal exercises. For our shorter HIIT workouts we usually do 1 or 2 abdominal exercises. My wife and I do the short HIIT workouts every day and therefore do 1 abdominal exercise in those workouts. We then work out abs 6 days a week but with a low enough volume that we recover for the next day.
Our after weight training HIIT workout would contain 5 exercises and our intervals would be 30 seconds on and 15 seconds off for a total of 15 minutes and total of 4 rounds. On another day we might do 5 exercises for 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off for a total of 12 minutes and 5 rounds. The possibilities are endless.
A list of the exercises we might do in a fifteen minute HIIT session might be tire flips, Kettlebell swings, rowing on the rower, medicine ball slams and a leg raise with the stability ball. Again the possibilities are endless.
On a final note we always chose safe exercises for our HIIT sessions. Everything is controlled and we don’t use heavy loads. We save the heavy lifting for our weight training sessions.
