HILIT May be Our New Favorite Workout Trend

A big new workout trend gaining speed is HILIT, which stands for High Intensity Low Impact Training.

At Cardio High we have always aimed to deliver the best HILIT workout in the world. We just were not smart enough to use that fancy acronym. We believe in all the benefits of high intensity – and the way it makes people feel more energetic. Those benefits include:

• Higher calorie burn per minute of working out
• Improved cardiovascular efficiency and reduction of blood pressure,
• Lower blood sugar levels
• Efficient fat burning
• Reversal of age-related muscle decline
• Reduction of risks of certain diseases such as diabetes.

There’s more benefits to HIIT that we are leaving out, but what’s the downside of high intensity training? Well, if you’re too intense, you can increase your injury risk. At Cardio High we use a low impact approach to raising heart rate, and we believe that reduces injury risk. We also employ a long dynamic warm-up and corrective exercises to further reduce these risks.

We should note that there are two forms of intensity in the HILIT world: strength and cardio intensity.

Some media outlets reporting on HILIT include various Pilates workouts that are quite intense and definitely low impact, however they do not raise the heart rate (for most people) above 80% of max heart rate. Yes, they are intense for the muscles and definitely build core strength, but traditional high intensity exercise is defined as a workout that raises heart rate above 80% for at least a few minutes.

At Cardio High we aim to raise heart rates over 80% for at least 15 minutes of the workout, though many clients maintain above 80% or even 90% for more than 15 minutes.

There is a new studio in LA called The Lit Method. We are curious to know how they are approaching HILIT and Bill R, our LA correspondent, is heading out to try LIT in the next few weeks.

We’ll let you know how it goes.

-Mark G.