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Makwa
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+ 16 When to implement HIIT and Steady State to optimize fat burning

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If you don’t know what HIIT and steady state cardio are, you have bigger issues than fat loss so I will spare everyone the definitions. Anyway, this is how I kind of structure my cardio when the goal is ultimate fat loss.

HIIT Training

HIIT is my primary method for fat loss and here are some of the reasons why:

  1. It is shorter duration than steady state. I hate cardio with a passion so the shorter time it takes to it the better.
  2. It increases your metabolic rate. This is what we want went dieting.
  3. EPOC…… (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) This is basically the amount of additional calories your body burns after you are done exercising (in this case cardio) which is above your baseline resting metabolic rate. What this jargon means is that you are still be burning extra calories even after your workout is finished. HIIT is great for EPOC!

Timing is everything with HIIT. One huge important point to keep in mind with HIIT is that you need sufficient fuel (glycogen) to avoid muscle breakdown at high intensity you will be implementing with HIIT. You probably see where I am going with this…….you DO NOT do HIIT fasted, you will be burning muscle. So if timing your HIIT sessions is everything, how do you time them.

There are two main considerations for your timing when doing HIIT. Time of the week and time of the day.

Time of the week for HIIT

You really don’t want to be doing HIIT 2 days in a row. If you are doing it right, HIIT is very taxing on your CNS and you need to give that time to recover just like your muscles need time to recover.

Since you are dieting, a lot of you may be doing some sort of carb or calorie cycling. Timing your HIIT around this cycling can make or break you. Here is why. Remember that HIIT is fueled by glycogen, so the first few days after your high carb day would be prime time for some mind/blowing HIIT. If you are blasting hit on your low carb/calorie day you may be too depleted and there will be insufficient stored glycogen available to fuel your HIIT and this can result in the dreaded breakdown of protein which will be used for fuel instead once your energy demands exceed the rate at which your body can oxidize fats for fuel.

Time of the day for HIIT

So, when is the best time of the day for HIIT. Well obviously you don’t want to do it fasted first thing in the morning . One of the better options is do it on your off days from the weights. But many of you like to get your weights and cardio in on the same trip to the gym. So if that is the case, do your HIIT before your weight session. You heard me right, do it BEFORE your workout. If doing it before your workout you should decrease the duration of your session compared to what you would be doing on your off day from the weights or if you were doing it 4+ hours from your weight session.

Why preworkout you say??? Here is why. The benefit to doing it preworkout compared to after is that the increased metabolites and lactic acid it triggers will help release fatty acids which will then be more easily burned during your weight training session. Doing it before may likely decrease your performance with the weights, but remember the goal here is fat loss not getting swole so the tradeoff is worth it.

Steady state cardio

For all the reasons above, I like to max out my HIIT sessions and then add in some steady state when I start hitting plateaus. I call steady state “mind-numbing cardio”. Steady state is my last resort but it does have its place in the fat loss battle. So what is that place I am sure you are asking right now. Once again timing is everything when it comes to cardio and steady state.

Timing of Steady State

Well based upon what you should have learned from the HIIT timing, steady state is something you can implement on your low carb/calorie days if need be. Since you likely won’t have sufficient glycogen available for a productive HIIT session without potentially burning muscle on those days, do some mind numbing cardio instead. If you just have to have your fix of cardio first thing in the morning, this is the type of cardio you can do fasted first thing in the morning also.

Okay, so you want to do your cardio the same day as your weight session……so when do you do the steady state in this case? Now you do your cardio AFTER your weight session. Why you ask? Because doing it then will help burn the fatty acids you released from your workout and it will increase blood flow which will help to clear the metabolic waste generated from your weights and help to speed up recovery. So you get a double bang here, speed up recovery and burn some fat. We are not talking about a mind numbing hour long session here either, 15-20 minutes is plenty.

Can you think of another time when steady-state could be implemented??? How bout right after your HIIT cardio. Yep, that is right. Two sessions of cardio back to back. Just like you use it to burn off the fatty acids generated from your lifting sessions and to increase blood flow, you can get those same benefits by doing it after your HIIT.

The final debate: But I burn more fat with Steady State

Yes you may likely burn a greater percentage of fat during steady state, BUT, your overall caloric expenditure will be lower and it will be limited only to the duration you are plugging away on the treadmill. It will produce zero EPOC, whereas your HIIT session will put you in an increased metabolic state melting the fat for hours after you are done. Bottom line is they both have their place so time them wisely to maximize fat burn.

YourHuckleberry's picture

This breaks my heart, I absolutely hate doing cardio before a weight session, it makes every machine I touch coated in sweat and I just look like a mess, but gotta follow the science

Roidney Dangerfield's picture

Thank you!

Ghoul's picture

Thank you, informative

foutjes's picture

Great read, thanks

RangerVet's picture

Thank you. Really enjoyed reading all this.

joey_ragz's picture

What's your favorite HITT routine? I'll be starting to cut in about a month and have never implemented it before so I'm curious as to what you think the best thing to do is.

giardap's picture

Wingates
It's HELL on 2 wheels... sort of