Complete Cardio Part 5: Power HIIT

It may not be peanut butter and jelly or Batman and Robin, but it’s a pretty great combination nonetheless: power training and high-intensity cardio.

Power HIIT involves doing intervals of explosive exercises with short intervals of rest. The exercises can include anything like power cleans, snatches, jump squats, power push-ups and kettlebell swings, just to name a handful. These are exercises that are typically done to develop explosive power, strength and speed for sports performance. Combining them with HIIT allows you to build more muscle power while increasing fat loss and cardiovascular conditioning.

With Power HIIT, both the exercise intervals and the rest intervals last 20 seconds. This time frame typically allows you to complete about 3-4 reps during each exercise interval, the perfect range for building power. Then, you get an equal amount of time to recover to help you better maintain power on the next work interval.

This 1:1 work-to-rest ratio can also help to build more muscle size and strength by boosting testosterone levels. One study out of New Zealand found that cyclists performing 30-second high-powered sprints separated by 30 seconds of rest (a 1:1 ratio) increased their testosterone levels by up to 100%. This, of course, can translate into more strength and size as well as better fat-burning by boosting the metabolism.

Power HIIT Programming

For each exercise in my Power HIIT scheme, you’ll do three exercise/rest intervals and then move on to the next exercise. This way, you’ll work at building power on each exercise without completely exhausting your muscles for other movements in the workout.

The power exercises used with Power HIIT are done in a very fast and explosive manner. These fast reps primarily recruit the fast-twitch muscle fibers, the ones that grow the biggest,strongest and fastest. Soit’s easy to understand how using HIIT workouts can help you build muscle and power. But the fast-twitch muscle fibers also burn the most calories when you use them. Plus, most of the exercises used in Power HIIT use a large number of muscle groups, which also maximizes calorie burning.

Start each Power HIIT workout with a 5-minute HIIT warm-up of jumping rope or jumping jacks. This warm-up should be done in typical HIIT fashion at a 2:1 ratio of jumping to rest. In this case, it’s 30 seconds of jumping followed by 15 seconds of rest, seven times through. (If you do the Power HIIT workouts after weight training, feel free to skip this 5-minute warm-up if you feel sufficiently warmed up already.)

After the jumping rope/jumping jacks HIIT warm-up, go right into the Power HIIT workout. Do three 20-second sets of each exercise, taking 20 seconds of rest between sets and exercises. In Workout A below, you start with squat jumps for building leg power. Then you move into power push-ups for building chest and triceps power. Next are power cleans done with dumbbells or a barbell, then it’s on to medicine-ball overhead throws. If you don’t have a medicine ball, you can simply do band shoulder presses or even barbell or dumbbell push presses. Finish with band standing crunches to build strength and power in the midsection. If bands are a problem, you can do a medicine ball crunch throw or even a regular crunch done with explosive reps on the positive rep.

Since you’ll want to repeat this workout several times a week, I’ve provided you a “Workout B” so you can alternate between the workouts without hitting the same exercises in the same order every time. In Workout B, you start with the kettlebell snatch. You can also do this with a dumbbell if kettlebells aren’t available. Then you move into the band sprint, calf jumps and kettlebell swings (which can also be done with a dumbbell). You’ll finish with the band woodchopper (or you can use a cable or a dumbbell) to build rotational power in the upper body and strengthen the core. Since you have to do both sides of the body, instead of doing threesets of 20 seconds each, do two 20-second sets of woodchoppers per side for a total of four sets.

In both Workouts A and B, you’re doing five exercises for three 20-second sets each (except in Workout B where you have an extra set for woodchoppers) with 20-second rest periods. This equals a total of 10 minutes.With the jump rope HIIT work for fiveminutes, that’s a total of 15 minutes of intense cardio that not only burns fat and enhances cardiovascular fitness but also builds overall muscle strength, power and mass. If your goal is to maximize muscle mass, strength and power and cardio is more an afterthought, keep it at this duration. Work on increasing the weight you use on the exercises and/or the number of reps you can bang out in those 20 seconds.

If fat loss is your primary goal, as well as the cardiovascular benefits that this novel form of cardio offers, then you’ll want to progressively bump up your total time of Power HIIT. I’ve offered you three stages to work up to, each of which increases total Power HIIT time. Go at your own pace. When the 15-minute workout is no longer much of a challenge, start on Phase 2, which brings your total HIIT workout to almost 20 minutes. When that becomes less challenging, it’s time to really get serious and jump into Phase 3, which brings your total workout time to 25 minutes.

You can do the Power HIIT either at the beginning or end of your workouts or on a separate day altogether. It all depends on your goals. If you’re using Power HIIT to boost muscle power and athletic performance, do this workout at the start of your training session or on a separate day from your usual weight training. If fat loss is the primary goal with Power HIIT, do it

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