Quote:
Originally Posted by onesnowyowl
One of the women's fitness magazines I read had a HIIT routine involving an ordinary bicycle or just plain running, so you don't need a gym to do it; I've done it with my bicycle. Works pretty well, actually, and it's more enjoyable than the gym.
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I use HIIT as part of my cardio and I can tell you that if you haven't been training your heart you won't be able to do full HIIT right off the bat. I'd make sure you are in at least decent shape before starting HIIT, and by this I mean, don't just pick it up and start doing it unless you've been doing cardio consitently. Basically, I do a 20 minute work out with HIIT, and I don't bother monitoring my heart rate. I've got a pretty good idea of what my heart rate is based off how hard it is for me. I warm up and then do intervals of jogging and sprinting. 2-3 minutes sprinting, 3-4 minutes jogging. Start out with less intervals, three maybe, and work up from there. Just a warning for those of you thinking about trying HIIT, it can easily be a waste of time or do more bad than good. Also, I wouldn't recommend doing HIIT all the time for your cardio, I do it for a couple months and then take a break.
To answer the OP, I'm currently reworking my routine to fit into the fall semester but here's what I was doing. I'm at 18% body fat for right now and I'm slowly gettting down to my goal of 15% (low for a woman, but it works for me). I have also been reworking my exercises to increase my endurance and other things for the road racing I've been getting into. My usual week goes like this:
+Cardio 3 days a week - HIIT mixed with long distance runs and biking.
+Weight Lifting 3 days a week - Mostly free weights, lower body and upper body on separate days.
+And the most important thing of all: I eat healthy! Seriously, you'll never have a six pack unless you eat well.