HIT has been proven to help generate powerful, athletic muscle
“We must establish a common vocabulary to avoid fancy names for programmes that have existed for 40 years”
bic and anaerobic energy systems due to the alternating pace and intensity of the exer- cise. It’s now used the world over to off er variation in an elite athlete’s preparation throughout the year. And now it’s coming to fi tness centres and gyms in the form of HIT. So how do we defi ne HIT?
DEFINING HIT Len Kravitz and Lance Dalleck – researchers at the University of New Mexico, in the US – defi ne interval training as “high-intensity, short duration training sessions performed at workloads above the lactate threshold, marked by an abrupt increase in blood lac- tate that forces the muscle to revert from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism”. Clearly this is hard to measure within a
gym environment. However, in a review paper undertaken in February by New Zealand’s AUT University (see the Lit- erature Review panel), HIT is defi ned as
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RESEARCH PAPERS
A 2005 study of 38 elite cyclists, published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, showed that interval training leads to improved respiratory function, including better blood fl ow through the lungs and oxygen-carbon dioxide exchange. In the study, HIT increased performance by improving ventilatory threshold and VO2 max, boosting the body’s ability to use oxygen to generate energy. Another study, published in the Jour-
nal of Physiology in July 2006, found improved adaptations in muscle cells aſt er interval training in contrast to tra- ditional steady-state endurance training. T e study compared two groups of active
either working at over 75 per cent of heart rate maximum (HR max) or 75 per cent of maximum oxygen uptake (VO2 max), fol- lowed by rest periods. Intervals vary from 1:1 (work:rest) ratios,
to 2:1 or other variations depending on fi t- ness levels. The rest phase can either be complete rest or dropping back to a mod- erate intensity to enable recovery. “However, 75 per cent HR max and 75 per
cent VO2 max are very diff erent intensities and not to be confused as being the same,” stresses Randy Huntington, global direc- tor of marketing, performance, education
HIT led to improved respiratory function
young men over two weeks. One group engaged in traditional long-duration training for 90–120 minutes, while the other did four to six sets of sprint inter- vals (30 seconds all-out and four-minute rest intervals). It revealed superior adapta- tions in muscle tissue of the HIT group.
and research at fi tness equipment specialist Keiser. So there are no clear-cut guidelines as yet, other than that the work phases should be ‘hard’ or ‘very hard’. Huntington, meanwhile, categorises HIT
as a form of circuit training. “In 1953, RE Morgan and GT Anderson at the Univer- sity of Leeds [UK] created circuit training – of which interval training is a subset – with Manfred Scholich going on to write the bible on interval/circuit training in 1986,” he explains. “T ere are many ways to do cir- cuits and Scholich has already labelled them quite well, setting a series of criteria: sets,
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