Get Your Heart Rate Up with this 45 min HIIT Workout
When it comes to maximising fat burn, supercharging your cardio fitness, and building awesome endurance power it’s hard to beat a HIIT workout. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. It involves short, intense bursts of work followed by equally short rest periods.
While HIIT sessions are usually relatively short, there is a lot of benefit in doing the occasional longer session. It will optimise your cardiovascular and muscular endurance, allowing you to go longer and harder in every other area of your life.
Here’s an awesome 45-minute HIIT workout to get your heart rate up and burn a ton of calories.
The Workout
This HIIT cardio workout can be done on any type of cardio equipment. The model I’ve presented here is based on the exercise bike but it can also be done on a road bike, treadmill, rowing machine, or elliptical. Some people enjoy mixing it up between different machines to add variety and work their muscles slightly differently each session.
I personally tend to do my HIIT cardio workouts on a treadmill because it is so easy to switch from maximum intensity to rest; you simply jump your legs out to the side of the running bed. I also find it easier to go all out with a sprint on the treadmill than on any other machine.
Ok, let’s break down the workout …
Begin with a 5-minute warm-up. Begin at a walking pace and gradually increase the intensity. By minute three, you should be jogging, then running and, when the clock ticks over to 5 minutes you need to be running at full speed.
Over the next 5 minutes, alternate between 30-second max intensity sprints and 30-second recoveries. Simply jump your legs out to the side of the running for your 30-second recovery periods.
For the next 6 minutes, alternate one-minute runs at 70 percent of max speed with one-minute recoveries. This time during your recovery periods you will remain on the running belt but bring the speed down to 30 percent of max speed.
For the next four minutes, you will fast walk at 50 percent of your max speed.
At this point, you will begin to repeat the sequence. So you will do a 5-minute bout of 30-second sprints and rest periods, followed by 5 minutes of medium intensity at 70 percent of max, and then four minutes of fast walking.
You will continue the sequence and then finish with a 5-minute cooldown.
Here’s how it looks minute by minute …
Minutes 1-4: Warm Up
Minutes 5-10: 30 sec sprint / 30 sec rest
Minutes 11-16: 60 sec run / 60 sec recovery
Minutes 17-20: fast walk
Minutes 21-25: 30 sec sprint / 30 sec rest
Minutes 26-30: 60 sec run / 60 sec recovery
Minutes 31-34: fast walk
Minutes 35-39: 30 sec sprint / 30 sec rest
Minutes 40 -43: 60 sec run / 60 sec recovery
Minutes 43-45: Cooldown
Wrap Up
Use this extended HIIT cardio workout once every couple of weeks to max your calorie burn and improve your endurance. Another couple of days each week, perform shorter HIIT sessions to improve your cardio and promote weight loss. Continue this routine for 12 weeks and you will be amazed at the results.
