20 Minute HIIT?

[Norry1]

I have always operated with the rule if I can't train for at least an hour (bike) it's not worth bothering. Lots of people seem to rave about the short duration, high intensity training such as this 20 minute one on GCN

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGGvKt8vWho


What do you experts reckon?

 

[Bangers]

I have never tried HIIT on my bike but have done it running and done other workouts and have found them a great change of pace as somebody who has mainly focused on endurance, I enjoy being on the limit of what my body will allow HIIT got me there very quickly.

 

[Rob3rt]

HIIT in its many forms is very effective, but the session here, like most of the stuff posted by GCN is a pretty pants.

For this example I would say the warm up is not long enough for those kind of efforts. Also, the resulting TSS would be very low, not worth putting your kit on for. With an easy 5-10 mins then a progressive warm-up followed by 2-3 sets of high intensity intervals with a rest in between then a suitable cooldown would be about an hour long and would be a reasonable session.

 

[50000tears]

I have done a lot of high intensity workouts over the last few months and like Robert said I could barely get the warm up and cool down done in 20 minutes. I have had some damn hard sessions though that have had a warm up, cool down, and the tough middle bit done in around 45 minutes. Most of these are 45 mins - 1 hour though.

The mistake some people make though is going for quantity of intervals rather than quality. 3 full on efforts is always going to be better than 4 or 5 done below the required intensity. You don't need long to train well but 20 minutes is in my opinion still too short.