3 Reasons Why You're Not Getting Results from HIIT Training
I don’t hate HIIT training at all. It’s a very effective tool to build cardio and work capacity. It’s something we prescribe for clients regularly at JaxFit.
But like any medicine its effectiveness depends on its dosage.
And I think people do HIIT too often.
There are more negatives than positives when you do HIIT style training more than 1-2 times per week.
Here are 3 reasons why you’re not getting results from HIIT training.
There’s Too Much Variety to Achieve Results
Here’s the truth about getting stronger or building muscle. You need to repeat the same movements a lot. And you need to make them harder over time.
A lot of HIIT training thrives on the idea that constantly switching up the movement choice within your workouts (largely for entertainment) is the path to fitness.
The key to getting fitter is to adhere to the principle of progressive overload. You need to work a specific muscle or function in a specific manner, progressively adding intensity and/or duration over time. Basically it means you need to practice exercises and develop the skills to get better at them- either better by performing them with heavier weights, performing more reps or performing them with less rest.
You CANNOT progressively overload anything if your workouts are constantly changing to keep you entertained.
Look, I get it. Doing something different every day is fun and exciting, but decades of research prove that it doesn’t work.
2. Confusing Soreness With Efficacy
I see a lot of HIIT people using soreness as a metric for judging whether a workout was effective or not.
It’s kind of a pet peeve of mine.
Soreness is simply your body responding to a new stimulus. You're feeling your body repairing itself.
You know when you bang your knee on the side of the table?
And you get a bruise?
That bruise is your body repairing itself.
Although it will hurt, feel tender to the touch and even limit your range of motion it’s an inflammation that your body produces to heal damaged tissue.
DOMS is pretty much the same thing but internally.
DOMS is not the sign of a “good workout” nor is it something you should expect, or aim for every time you train.
DOMS is your body’s reaction to a new stimulus. It’s not a reliable sign that your muscles have been taxed in an effective way.
If you’re chasing soreness you’re basically chasing entertainment and novelty, and you’ll end up getting hurt before you can achieve any results. Random never works in the gym.
3. Too Much Focus on Calorie Burning During Exercise
Look, exercise kind of sucks when it comes to calorie burning and fat loss.
If you’re serious about losing weight then the easier, most sustainable and most functional way is to create a caloric deficit with your diet and use your workouts to build muscle.
Can exercise burn a ton of calories?
Yeah, of course. But it takes a long time to complete and it taxes your systems so much that you need some serious time to recover. If you want to burn 1,000 calories per hour all you have to do is fly over to Shakespeare’s Cliff in the UK and swim the English Channel towards France.
I also think developing the mindset of “exercise only to burn calories” is pretty toxic. It skews the relationship with exercise towards punishment, and very few people enjoy punishment and can do it sustainably.
The effective mindset is to use exercise to build muscle.
I know that sounds daunting, but no matter what your goal is, building muscle is going to be a component.
You know how you want to get “toned”? Well, getting toned means losing fat and building muscle or at least preserving muscle.
This might get me in trouble, but you know how when some people lose a bunch of weight they look soft or skinny fat? It’s because they didn’t build or maintain their muscle during their weight loss process.
They lost weight- meaning they lost muscle and fat. So while they’re smaller they don’t look like a better version of themselves, they just look like a smaller version of themselves.
The people who look the best after their transformation are the ones who focus on losing fat and building/maintaining muscle.
If you want to look more toned or sleeker you HAVE to focus on muscle growth during your weight loss journey.
And that is something that won’t happen if your only purpose of exercising is to burn calories.
So like I said, I don’t think HIIT is bad at all. I think it’s very effective when prescribed and done in the proper manner.
And really I'm not anti-HIIT or anti-franchise gym. I'm anti you wasting your time and effort. If you're going to commit to an exercise program you deserve one that is going to make you better, not one that's just going to make you sweaty.
But if you’re serious about changing your body you need to recognize that training for entertainment purposes won’t get you very far. You have to make peace with the fact that you’re going to have to do a lot of unsexy, boring work to build the body you want.
The most sustainable and proven effective strategy for burning fat and looking fucking great is to create an energy imbalance through your diet and then use your time in the gym to build muscle.
HIIT won’t do that for you.
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