HIIT is hard.
Too busy to exercise? Short, brutal workouts won’t help.
In her New York Times blog post titled 1 Minute of All-Out Exercise May Have Benefits of 45 Minutes of Moderate Exertion, Gretchen Reynolds writes:
…exercise scientists and many of the rest of us have become intrigued by the idea of exercising exclusively with intervals, ditching long workouts altogether.
The allure of this approach is obvious. Interval sessions can be short, making them a boon for anyone who feels that he or she never has enough time to exercise.
This isn’t the first article I’ve read advocating for the benefits of HIIT. Les Mills, the international group fitness cult I’m currently certified with, has even created new formats entirely focused on high-intensity training: GRIT and SPRINT. Intense intervals are definitely part of the way people work out in 2016. But HIIT is not the solution for those who can’t exercise due to busy schedules.
People who don’t have time to exercise are usually focused on other pursuits: education, children, a career, a creative project. This means that one (or more) of those pursuits is more fulfilling than exercising — since the person chose to do that instead of exercising. I believe most people with reasonable levels of emotional well-being and financial resources have their priorities straight, and will choose to focus on the thing that’s most important to them.
As a group fitness instructor, I know that fit people exercise because they find it highly important and fulfilling. When I work out, it’s a break from normal life, allowing me to focus on my own needs, connect with a community, and then leave feeling full of endorphins. For those who don’t exercise regularly, though, I’m aware exercise is not a form of emotional coping. It’s a struggle that often necessitates other forms of coping to handle. If spending an hour at the gym didn’t give me feelings of release and renewal, I’d never feel like I had time for it.
HIIT is one of the most difficult forms of exercise. If you want to actually receive the benefits of going “all out,” you must force your body to suffer. The feeling is close to pure panic: physiological triggers tell you to stop, but you determine to continue. It hurts. A lot. If it doesn’t, you’re not going “all out.”
That feeling is opposite to the workouts that led me to a lifelong fitness practice. Back in college, I was a “cardio bunny.” I did homework on the elliptical, followed by a few sets of bicep curls and side crunches. Were those workouts ineffectual? No way. They were my safe space — and they gave me a positive relationship with the gym and the people I saw there. Over the next 10 years, that basis made me comfortable investigating more intense and physically effective forms of training, like weightlifting, endurance running, Ashtanga yoga — and HIIT. Eventually I became a group fitness instructor because I was interested in helping create that feeling of safety for others.
Science rhetoric often implies there are shortcuts to getting what we want. But that’s never the case. Even 1 Minute of All-Out Exercise does Have Benefits of 45 Minutes of Moderate Exertion, achieving an athletic and fit body still requires massive focus, energy, and sacrifice. A more reasonable goal, especially for those with commitments to children and productive careers, should be to maintain an activity level that promotes long-term cardiovascular health, and daily strength and mobility. The keyword here is maintain. And that means finding a way to feel good about exercising so you can justify making time for it. Starting with HIIT — exercise designed to make you feel like shit — is unlikely to help you accomplish this.
