HIIT 100 Program Overview

What happens when you combine HIIT cardio with German Volume Training and the popular Hundreds method? You get one of the most efficient programs there is for whittling away stubborn body fat: HIIT 100, my popular six-week plan that's helped hundreds of thousands of people leave boring, ineffective steady-state cardio sessions behind with leaner, more muscular physiques to show for it.

Get With HIIT

You're probably familiar with high-intensity interval training (HIIT). When it comes to cardio, HIIT is definitely the best way to strip off body fat, to the extent that there's no reason to hop on a treadmill and run at a steady pace for 30 or more minutes unless you're an endurance athlete. And if you're reading this, chances are you don't want the physique of a marathoner.

For those of you who aren't familiar with HIIT, it involves intervals of high-intensity exercise (such as running at 90% of your max heart rate) followed by low intensity exercise (walking at a moderate pace) or complete rest. This is in sharp contrast to the typical steady-state cardio most people do at a moderate intensity, such as walking on a treadmill at 60%-70% of their max heart rate or jogging.

HIIT was originally developed by track coaches to train runners, but it has crossed over to the fitness industry due to its fat-burning benefits confirmed many times over in scientific studies. A lot of these studies found that subjects performing HIIT burned significantly more body fat – and in less time – than those who did steady-state cardio programs.

The major reason HIIT works so well for dropping body fat is due to the greater calorie burn (or EPOC, short for excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) that's maintained after the workout is over. In other words, you burn more calories and more body fat while you're sitting around doing nothing. In addition to this increase in resting metabolism, HIIT is effective at enhancing the mechanisms in muscle cells that promote fat burning and blunt fat storage.

When most people think of HIIT, they think of it as applicable only for cardio, yet it can also be used in weight training. After all, weight training itself is a form of HIIT. Think about it: You do a set with all-out effort, rest, then do another set, rest, and repeat. Resting two to three minutes between sets, however, is too long for a training session to be considered an effective form of HIIT. But all you have to do is shorten rest periods and you're doing a kind of HIIT that positively torches fat.

Here's where things get interesting and where the HIIT 100 program gets its name. Not only have I combined HIIT with weights, but I've also incorporated two very popular, intense and effective weight-training techniques: German Volume Training (GVT) and Hundreds training. With GVT, aka 10x10, you do 10 sets of 10 reps on a given exercise. Hundreds, as the name implies, involves doing 100-rep sets.

You'll utilize Hundreds in this program by doing 10 sets of 10 reps for one exercise per muscle group. Sounds the same as GVT, right? Not exactly. HIIT is incorporated via the rest periods between those 10 sets. The two forms of training – GVT and Hundreds – are technically different, but late in the HIIT 100 program, when you're resting only 10 or 20 seconds between sets of 10, there's little to distinguish them as far as the toll they take on your body.

Hundreds of Benefits

While the major benefit of this program is rapid fat loss, the fringe benefits are just as impressive. Even though the weights you use will need to be light, your muscles will still get the signal to grow. In particular, you'll experience insane growth in muscle groups that you don't typically train with high volume, like traps, forearms and calves. But you may also be surprised by the muscle growth you experience in areas like your arms and legs. After all, one of the best ways to optimize muscle growth is by making a given weight harder. And that's exactly what HIIT 100s does – it makes a very light weight brutally difficult to move. The stress your muscles receive is what influences muscle growth. It pushes muscle fatigue to new levels, which stimulates the production and build-up of biochemical waste products. These waste products, of course, are not a complete waste, since they stimulate the release of hormones such as growth hormone (GH), which not only boosts muscle size but also encourages fat burning.

Another obvious benefit of doing 100 reps with progressively shorter rest periods is increased muscle endurance, which will boost your conditioning – a big advantage if you play sports. Even if you're not an athlete, this benefit will ring loud and clear in your workouts. When you go back to your regular regimen, where you're resting a couple minutes between sets, your muscle recovery will be quicker, thus allowing you to get more reps with the same weight on successive sets and delivering a greater stimulus.

HIIT 100 Program Specifics

Here's a rundown of the major components of the HIIT 100 program...

HIIT 100 Training Split

HIIT 100 is a six-days-a-week program that follows a three-day bodypart training split. What that means is, the entire body is trained every three days, and that’s repeated twice a week.

Here’s how the schedule lays out for all six weeks:

Day 1: Chest, back, abs

Day 2: Legs, triceps, calves

Day 3: Shoulders, traps, biceps, forearms

Day 4: Chest, back, abs

Day 5: Legs, triceps, calves

Day 6: Shoulders, traps, biceps, forearms

Note: Each of these workouts finishes with a full-body exercise (dead-curl-press on Days 1 and 4, kettlebell swing on Days 2 and 5, dumbbell clean on Days 3 and 6), yet I still consider this program a bodypart split, not a full-body routine. (I discuss these exercises in more detail in the below "HIIT 100 Finishers" section.)

HIIT 100 Weight Selection

On HIIT 100 exercises, select a weight that's equal to 50% of what you could normally do for 10 reps. Don't worry about going too heavy. If you can't complete all 10 reps before the eighth set, drop the weight by 5-10 pounds. If you can't complete 10 reps during or after the eighth set, finish all 10 sets doing as many reps as possible for each. In this case, the next time you train that muscle group, decrease the starting

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