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How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
Plus: how to stretch if you've never stretched before
The 10almonds Team
August 12, 2023
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Loading Screen Tip: you’re the world #1 at being you. Your imperfections make you beautiful!
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has many benefits and reasons to choose it over, or in addition to, other forms of exercise. Its strengths include:
Burns more calories than other forms of exercise
Boosts your metabolic rate for hours afterwards
…which means that unlike many forms of exercise (which result in a metabolic slowdown later to compensate) it actually works for fat loss
Reduces blood pressure (unless already healthy)
Can promote muscle growth (depends on other factors)
However, any new exercise routine should be entered into carefully, which prompts the question: how does one gently ease oneself into *checks notes* sudden bursts of maximum-effort exercise?
See today’s main feature for suggestions!
As we get older, our brains can struggle to keep up with maintaining correct levels of some neurochemicals.
Today’s sponsor, Mindhoney, has potent all-natural nootropics to give your brain a boost of the things it needs to keep it in top health.
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
How To Stretch If You Haven't Stretched Before
…or if you have stretched before, but got out of the habit and lost flexibility; stretching can be hard to get back into!
Stretchy menu:
(Do not trust that towel! It is lying!)
🎽 MAIN FEATURE
How To Do HIIT (Without Wrecking Your Body)
High-Intensity Interval Training, henceforth “HIIT”, is a well-researched and well-evidenced approach to exercise that gives powerful health benefits.
Specifically, health benefits that we don’t get from moderate exercise (as important as that is too) or endurance training.
Super-quick overview of the benefits first:
Burns more calories than other forms of exercise
Boosts your metabolic rate for hours afterwards
…which means it actually works* for fat loss
Reduces blood pressure (unless already healthy)
Can promote muscle growth (depends on other factors)
*remember that most forms of exercise aren’t very good for fat loss, because our metabolism will slow afterwards to compensate. So HIIT flipping this one is quite a big deal.
What actually is it?
HIIT means exercise sessions in which one alternates between high intensity “maximum effort” bursts, and short recovery periods during which more moderate exercise is performed.
An example for runners could be switching between sprinting or jogging, changing mode each time one passes a street light.
❝A total of only two minutes of sprint interval exercise was sufficient to elicit similar responses as 30 minutes of continuous moderate intensity aerobic exercise❞
What did you mean about not wrecking your body? Is that… Likely?
Hopefully not, but it’s a barrier to some! We are not all twenty-something college athletes, after all, and our bodies aren’t always as durable as they used to be.
HIIT relies on intense exercise and short recovery periods, but what if our bodies are not accustomed to intense exercise, and need longer recovery periods? Can we still get the same benefits?
The trick is not to change the intensity or the recovery periods, but the exercise itself.
For HIIT to work the “intense” part has to be best-effort or approaching such. That part’s not negotiable. The recovery periods can be stretched a bit if you need to, but with the right tweaks, you ideally won’t have to do that.
Great! How?
First, note that you can do resistance interval training without impact. For example, if you crank up the resistance on an exercise bike or similar machine, you will be doing resistance training along with your cardio, and you’ll be doing it without the impact on your joints that you would if out pounding the pavement on foot.
(Running is fine if your body is used to it, but please don’t make HIIT your first running exercise in a decade)
Second, consider your environment. That exercise bike? You can get off it any time and you’re already at home (or perhaps your gym, with your car outside). Not so if you took up mountain biking or road racing.
Third, go for what is gentle in motion, even if it’s not resistance work per se. Swimming is a fabulous option for most people, and can absolutely be done with HIIT principles. Since vision is often obscured while swimming, counting strokes can be a good way to do HIIT. For example, ten strokes max effort, ten strokes normal, repeat. Do make sure you are aware of where the end of the pool is, though!
Fourth, make it fun! Ok, this one’s not about the safety quite so much, but it is about sustainability, and that’s critical for practical purposes too. You will only continue an exercise routine that you enjoy, after all.
Could you curate a musical playlist that shifts tempo to cue your exercise mode intervals?
Could you train with an exercise partner? Extra fun if this has a “relay race” feel to it, i.e. when one person completes a high intensity interval, the other person must now begin theirs.
Need some pointers getting started?
There are a lot of HIIT apps out there, so you can just search for that on your device of choice.
But!
We at 10almonds have recommended 7-Minute Workout before, which is available for iOS and for Android, and we stand by that as a great starting choice.
Enjoy!
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
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In fact, many of them are ingredients we’ve featured here before for their many benefits, and others were good reminders that we should be writing about them!
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Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
🌎 AROUND THE WEB
What’s happening in the health world…
Short bursts of daily activity linked to reduced cancer risk
People's perception of sleep quality can greatly impact their well-being, study finds
Symptoms of the body and the mind are frequent fellow travelers
HIIT before surgery makes a big difference to outcomes
Why pain is so hard to measure, and how the study of brainwaves could help
Could psychedelic therapy be the next frontier for mental health care?
Intense exercise may help slow Parkinson's disease, experts say
More to come tomorrow!
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging In Our Lifetime – by Dr. Aubrey de Grey
We know about how to slow aging. We know about diet, exercise, sleep, intermittent fasting, and other lifestyle tweaks to make. But how much can we turn back the clock, according to science?
Dr. Aubrey de Grey's foundational principle is simple: the body is a biological machine, and aging is fundamentally an engineering problem.
He then outlines the key parts to that problem: the princple ways in which cells (and DNA) get damaged, and what we need to do about that in each case. Car tires get damaged over time; our approach is to replace them within a certain period of time so that they don’t blow out. In the body, it’s a bit similar with cells so that we don’t get cancer, for example.
The book goes into detail regards each of the seven main ways we accumulate this damage, and highlights avenues of research looking to prevent it, and in at least some cases, the measures already available to so.
Bottom line: if you want a hard science overview of actual rejuvenation research in biogerontology, this is a book that presents that comprehensively, without assuming prior knowledge.
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Wishing you a wonderful weekend,
The 10almonds Team