My First HIIT Class!

I taught my first HIIT class! Every Saturday there’s an hour-long HIIT class from 9-10am. We have a rotating instructor schedule so the class format is always changing based on who’s teaching it. For those who don’t know…

• H – High
• I – Intensity
• I – Interval
• T – Training

Now, an hour is QUITE a long time for a HIIT class. A good HIIT workout can you leave you exhausted after just 30 minutes. I thought I had seen another instructor shorten their cycling class (another rotating instructor schedule) to 45 minutes so I thought I’d do the same. Now, it’s been almost a year since I went to that class so I’m probably not remembering that correctly. Anyway, I pushed and wiggled my way into the HIIT rotation schedule and my director finally agreed!

And then she told me I had to keep it to the full hour.

This was pretty much my reaction:

Yep. In instances like this, when I’m in doubt, I smile and fake it. I was freaking out a bit on the inside, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Let’s face it, the longer the class, the more the money. And then being able to do that intense of a class for a whole hour?? Yeah, I was happy and super nervous.

Well Saturday came around and BAM! I nailed it! I was really wanting to do a PIIT class but, as you know, that’s a paid-for program so that would be a big no-no. Stealing is a bad thing. But they gave me permission to make it my own. PIIT wouldn’t have worked for an entire hour anyway.

I kept with the intervals of cardio and strength training moves but obviously did more with it. I can’t work the lower body for an hour at that intensity. What about the rest of the body? Nope. Not happening.

My HIIT plan:

8 moves in a round alternating cardio and strengthening. 6 rounds total: 2 rounds for legs // arms // core. 45s for each move with a break between each move and each round. Warm-up in the beginning and Stretching at the end. In an added attempt to change it from PIIT, I made sure the moves I used were moves you’d find in other classes/workouts.

I didn’t bother timing the breaks. Just long enough for me to show the next move and then enough time to get some water between rounds. My students came in a bit late so I had to cut up the 2 rounds of core to stay in our 1-hr time frame. Stretching still knocked us over but there was no class after ours so it was okay.

After class I was all…

I definitely want to do that again! Turns out my hubby was really anxious too. I had told him it would be a difficult class (I was right, it was) so he was worried for me. Now we’re both proud I can kick people’s butts without killing myself in the process.

Next time I’ll do 30s each move to accommodate for any longer breaks that might accidentally happen (or students arriving late) so I don’t have to cut into the rounds of core. I’ll also do harder core moves (cardio moves that incorporate the core more) because my core wasn’t sore or tired at all. My arms were pretty darn pooped though. I may incorporate weights sometime in the future too. I like body weight moves but we’ll see.