{"id":182226,"date":"2025-12-13T18:26:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T18:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/182226\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T18:26:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T18:26:16","slug":"two-hiit-sessions-a-week-is-the-sweet-spot-for-improving-your-cardio-says-study-heres-what-they-should-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/182226\/","title":{"rendered":"Two HIIT sessions a week is the sweet spot for improving your cardio, says study. Here\u2019s what they should be"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like it of loathe it, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a key component of any decent training week. But how many of these sessions do runners need to do each week to get a meaningful aerobic boost<\/a>? <\/p>\n

The answer, according a new study<\/a> of German runners, is two. The researchers assigned the 26 runners to one of three protocols: x1, x2 or x3 weekly HIIT sessions, while continuing their normal endurance training. <\/p>\n

The session followed the classic Norwegian format<\/a> of 4 x 4-minute intervals at roughly 5K<\/a> pace, with 3 minutes of jogged recovery between sets. <\/p>\n

The result? All groups saw improvements in their VO2 max and time-to-exhaustion. But the biggest change was in those who did the above session twice a week. <\/p>\n

VO2 max increased by 0.6% in the once weekly group, 7.7% in the twice weekly group and 5.6% in the thrice weekly group. The twice weekly group also had the biggest improvement in time-to-exhaustion \u2013 up by 11%. <\/p>\n

The message for runners? Two HIIT sessions a week appears to be the \u2018Goldilocks\u2019 zone when it comes to improving VO2 max and time-to-exhaustion. One session a week won\u2019t do too much, while three appears to be overkill. HIIT the one in the middle. <\/p>\n

Two HIIT sessions to try <\/p>\n

Along with the 4 x 4 minute session used in the trial, mix things up with these tried-and-tested HIIT sessions.<\/p>\n

For speed<\/p>\n

After a long warm-up, run the following series of repeats as fast as you can without feeling out of control: 3 x 100m, 3 x 150m, 3 x 100m. Take two to three minutes of standing or walking rest to recover between each rep. <\/p>\n

For endurance<\/p>\n

After 15 mins of light running, do 10 x 800m at a threshold (ie. just about sustainable) pace. Take the same amount of recovery (walking or jogging) as the time it took to run the 800m reps. For example, if you run 800m in 3mins 30secs, take 3mins 30secs recovery before beginning the next rep. <\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like it of loathe it, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a key component of any decent training week.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[8913,115649,2117,565,134,2116,111,139,69,115648,115647],"class_list":["post-182226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-content-type-advice","tag-contentid-201830a6-640b-4b9b-8c38-1583cd86b9de","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-locale-gb","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-says-study-heres-what-they-should-be","tag-shorttitle-two-hiit-sessions-a-week-is-the-sweet-spot-for-improving-your-cardio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}