"40 ON 20 OFF"
"AS MANY ROUNDS AS POSSIBLE"
"GO GO GO GO"
"ONE MORE ROUND"
Any of these instructions being yelled out by your trainers at the top of their lungs sound familiar? We thought so!
HIIT is the current big thing! High Intensity, Interval Training, the style of training itself is fantastic.
It allows us to develop strength, increase cardiovascular capacity, allows all fitness levels to work through at their own pace and is shown to burn lots of a calories in a short amount of time, but, there's always a but.
Within the last 5 years Group Training has become ever so popular. Franchises are popping up left, right and centre after being able to 'market' interval training (which has been around forever) into a 'cool' group environment! Which is wonderful in it's own right as it's evolved into bringing a fantastic social aspect to exercise which once never existed, but how does our body react to this training model?
Let's start with the concern, without variety and rest, we run the risk overtraining. Short term affects of overtraining include disrupted metabolism which can hinder goals such as weight loss or muscle gain, prolonged DOMS and increased risk of injury due to increased physical and mental fatigue! Long term we can encounter problems with adrenal fatigue, hormonal concerns and (what we seem to see more often) muscular imbalances leading to postural problems.
Now when we talk 'overtraining' we mean an advanced training body, giving their absolute all on a daily basis, unfortunately a few wines on a Friday night, then coming in to Super Saturday at 7am and feeling a bit dusty is not necessarily a sign that you've bee overdoing our sessions. We've recently talked about what the body endures to metabolise energy in order for us to perform, when our heart rate is near maximal, our force output is near maximal and breathing rate is near maximal (all expected in a HIIT environment) we create copious amounts of stress throughout our skeletal muscle system and more importantly our central nervous system. With this being said, we recover and improve whilst we rest and repair! If we continue to put our bodies through the stressors of a HIIT session daily, we never find that period to properly recover, the end result is ultimately some kind of burnout.
Now this all sounds scary, but is a chance to reflect on your training week. We encourage our members to look at your overall training week, not just 'what's on tomorrow'
- Is it balanced? (Am I doing enough variety?)
- Is there a lower intensity session to allow our body to recover? (Day1's FLOW session, a stretch session etc.)
- Are we appropriately supplementing our body with nutrition? (Eating a variety of our macronutrients)
- How well do you handle your training? Do you feel exhausted? Do you feel fine? You know your body best!
So, look at your weekly schedule, space out your higher intensity sessions, include a slower paced session and maximise your workouts in order to maximise your goals!
At Day1, that's our point of difference. We're not a cookie cutter group program! Strength, HIIT, Flow, Boxing and Ninja, we offer a balanced group schedule to ensure you can train SMART each and every day!