Is it just as effective to do HIIT training on the bike in comparison to running on the treadmill?

For what it's worth, one of the classic landmark studies that looked at a HIIT and V02 max ( Tabata et. al. ) used stationary bikes. And I can tell you, the ' Tabata protocol " is nothing short of brutal and not for the feint of heart.

In a nutshell, you can get an amazing HIIT workout on a bike.

That said, you can also use skipping rope, a stair-climber, an elliptical trainer, a rower, a treadmill etc. for HIIT sessions

The thing about the treadmill is, because of the time it takes to get the treadmill up / down to speed and the incline up / down it might make it a little less practical than a bike. I used treadmills for training my hockey players for HIIT, so we got around that by jumping on and off every time while holding speed and incline at ' work interval ' levels when they were off the treadmill trying to catch their breath and recover.

I see.

Is there any specific mode that I should be setting the bike on when doing on of these HIIT workouts on the bike? I'm a newbie in the world of HIIT on bikes and stuff.

Once I set it into a mode, all I have to do is go hard for a minute, then go normally for a minmute, go hard for a minute, gonormally for aminute etc for about 20 minutes? correct?

And this should help me lose excess fat, right?

Remember the " High Intensity " in " High Intensity Interval Training ". This usually mean going ' hard ' or ' flat out " for a specified period of time - usually the work interval - and the work interval can vary quite a bit in terms of time ....... it can be 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds , 90 seconds etc. etc. Thing is, since " High Intensity " is what it is, so as a" newbie " it is best that you are already in some form of aerobic cardio shape before you dive into HIIT IMO - i.e I would expect someone should be able to do 30 minutes of steady state cardio at a good clip for 30 minutes before doing hard HIIT sessions - but that's just me.

And of course, the work interval is followed by a rest interval too ( simply going at a reduced level of intensity ). Again you sometimes see HIIT expressed in terms of work / rest ratios like 1:1 or 1:2 or 1:3 or 1:4...where a 1:2, for example, is going hard for one unit of time ( i.e 1 minute ) and resting for 2 units ( i.e 2 minutes ).

As far as fat burning goes, there is a well respected trainer ( Alwyn Cosgrove ) who uses a HIIT protocol to optimize fat burning - and he suggests using a 1:2 ratio - hard ( i.e flat out ) for 1 minute, and easy for 2 minutes, Total HIIT workouts in this case shouldn't need to go beyond 20-25+ minutes.

As far as stationary bikes, our players didn't use any program modes. Our hockey players would simply warm up at 80 rpm on the bike at a minimal or moderate resistance for 3-5 minutes , go hard as they could for 1 minute, the go back at peddling at a minimal or moderate resistance for 2 minutes at 80 rpm to recover, then do the 1 on / 2 off again, again, again etc. etc. .

Yes....it'll help.

That said, diet should be you primary focus when wanting to lose fat IMO. No workout regimen can overcome a lousy diet IMO.

As for actually burning fat itself via cardio, given your diet is O.K., if you want to burn the most amount of fat in the least amount of time, introducing some interval training or HIIT into your weekly workout routine will help.

Here's why. There was a landmark study done at Laval university up here in Canada that looked at a steady state cardio group of subjects vs a HIIT group of subjects and their respective fat loss. The steady state cardio group burned 2X as many calories ( while actually exercising ) as the HIIT group...so you might expect the steady state cardio group had more fat loss cause they burned twice the calories during exercise.

But, once they accounted for those differences in the amount burned during exercise, they found that for every calorie burned while exercising, the HIIT group ended up with more fat loss per calorie expended than the steady state cardio group. In fact, the HIIT group had a fat loss 9 X greater than the steady state cardio group.

As I already said, there a lot of ways to structure a HIIT and how you go about it depends a lot on what your current fitness level is and what your goals are. You simply have to go thru some trial and error to see what works best for you. However, again, I would simply caution you that HIIT is very intense and that you should only try it if you have a solid aerobic base in place first IMO.

Hey Wrangell,
Thanks for the info. I'm 19 years old and I know that I can push myself and survive 20 minutes of this high intensity stuff. I'm a very sporty person and I could survive 30 minutes of running.

I haven't used a bike before so all I have to do is hop onto the bike, right, and get started.
0 to 3.30 = warm up
3.30 to 4 = high intensity
4 to 4:30 = minimal/mod
4:30 to 5 = high intensity
5 to 5:30 = minimal/mod
until 18:30 minutes and then ill go minimal/mod to cool down up to 20:30 minutes

How does that sound? I'm on a bf % of around 13-14 so how many times a week should i be doing this and how long will it take to get my bf % to around 10%? Cheers

Fair enough, at 19 and at that your fitness level...you should be able to give HIIT a good go it seems.

I'd use the very first bike session just to do a steady pace - not HIIT - 20 minute bike ride - just to get acquainted with the bike . No need to rush. This will allow you to get used to riding at a steady 80 rpm, to find out what seat height is most comfortable, play around with the resistance levels a bit, adjust the toe traps on the peddles etc.

That's the general idea. I wouldn't start with a 1:1 ratio ( 30 seconds on / 30 seconds off ) just yet though. I'd probably opt for a 1:3 ratio to start as I think you're going to find you need more time to recover than you think. So, use your first 2 or 3 HIIT sessions to do some trial and error - i.e play around with different time of work/rest sessions, the intensity of sessions etc. If it were me, I'd eventually aim to a protocol of 1:2 and still try for 1 minute work interval and stick with that for awhile. But again, that's just me.

Yup...you're good to go.


To start, I'd probably start with HIIT 2X a week with at least a day or 2 of rest between sessions. Do that 2X a week for at least a couple of weeks. On other days you can do 30 minutes of steady state cardio or weights etc. I've seen one trainer advocate maxing out with HIIT 5X a week ( for a short period of time ) to optimize fat loss ( this is after 12 weeks of HIIT training mind you ) - but I wouldn't do any more than HIIT 4X a week and I wouldn't try that for another 6-8 weeks or so. Try 2X a week for a couple of weeks, then move up to 3X a week and if you're into it, eventually shoot for 4X a week if your goal is some short term fat loss. From a long term perspective though, I'd probably try to do HIIT no more than 3X a week on an on-going basis.

As for fat loss, it depends on lbs. For some gym rats, dropping 4% in body fat means dropping 5 lbs, for others it might mean dropping 10,15 + lbs. etc. etc.
Whether you choose to approach fat loss with a combo of cardio, diet and weight training, the rate of fat loss depends on how aggressively you approach each of those areas. A reasonable approach would be to try and aim for dropping about .5 - 1.0 lbs of fat a week. But again, how much fat you will actually lose each week depends a lot on diet and the type, frequency, duration, and intensity of your exercise regimen as well.

good morning all, just back from the gym myself did my chest some 1 arm rows and some shrugs and finished off with 15 mins on the HIIT on the crosstrainer nearly killed me after 8 mins but it seems i quickly adjusted to it, it felt good though.

Wrangell, You seem to be very educated in this area. Do you think it would be efficient to do umm lets say a mix with steady pace for 30 mins and HIIT in one week? For like the past year ive been doin 5 days a week 30 mins cardio steady pace on a precor. I will experiment it this week, you said earlier 4 days a week max, 3 days off of cardio seems like a lot to me heh but i'll see.

Actually I just THINK I know what I'm talking about.

Absolutely !

Actually,I think blending some HIIT AND steady state cardio during the week is ' ideal ' - but that's just me. By that, I mean HIIT on some days and steady state on other days.

Well, it depends on how good a shape you're in, how much time you have and if you have to squeeze in weight training etc. etc.

That said, for many years, I did cardio 5X a week - steady moderate state cardio Mon,Wed & Fri and did HIIT Tuesday and Thursdays. Sometimes I would spill the cardio into the weekends instead depending on my schedule.

Just remember - your diet is key.

You want to make sure your diet is in real good shape - i.e lots of carbs to fuel cardio sessions - and that you take advantage of proper timing like pre and post workout nutrition etc. etc.

I still haven't figured out HIIT really, I plan on using the precor and then doing 1 minute sprint 2 minutes at a steady pace ( 17cal per minute according to the machine) I'm not sure if that would be HIIT I will go all out sprint as my coach for swimming said "leave it all in the pool" so just all out!!

You said make sure I get alot of carbs?!?! I have been trying this new protein diet because before I never used to get above 200g now I wanna get up to around 250 and try to keep my carbs under 200g.

Proper timing is probably the hardest part for me, but I will make sure to get some carbs before I go wrokout and then after, since I wanna try carb cylcin Ill load up with about 100g right after my workout. Thanks for the advice!

The thing about HIIT is that it's primary fuel for energy is glycogen. Ditto for weight training - glycogen is the primary fuel in this case as well. And, glucose / glycogen is derived primarily by the digestion of carbs.

If your body runs out or is very low of glycogen, it may turn to protein and convert that to the fuel it requires. You want to avoid that. You don't want protein to be used as fuel for cardio. You want protein to be used primarily to repair and build new muscles tissue. So having a lot of carbs in your diet not only ensures you have all the glycogen you need to fuel HIIT and weight training but by doing so , it also spares protein as being used as an energy source.

Generally, when you try and break down your calories for the day, a reasonable approach might look something like ...

- protein makes up 15% - 20% of daily calories
- fat makes up 25% - 30%
- carbs make up the bulk of it .......50%- 60%.

And as far as protein goes, even if your goal is to add muscle mass, you only need .8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight....and even if you do cardio while weight training, 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight should be the MAX you'd need IMO.

We talked about the same thing here Wrangell. Haha, but definitely the days when I do HIIT I will make sure I get enough carbs. Today was the first day I even tried it, it wasn't the most accurate I would say but really close. My gym has a track so I did one all out and 2 normal pace for about 2.2 miles and then died it all added up to 25 minutes with the warm up and cool down.

I love that you guys are discussing HIIT but the mode and length in which you are talking about doing it is a little off.

True HIIT or sprint interval training (SIT) is done with the sprint interval lasting no longer than 1 minute. Followed by extremely low intensity recovery cycles 2 to 4 minutes. If you can maintain a fairly moderate intensity recovery interval, or sprint again in less than 2 minutes, then your sprint was not intense enough.

Think about the 400 meter sprint. When you do that you are completely exhausted and cannot continue without a rest. That is how it needs to be done in order to receive the benefits that research has shown.

The safest way to start doing it is on a recumbent bike. You can also do this with dumbbells performing turkish getups. The goal is do an exercise that completely fatigues you in 1 minute or less and you have performed HIIT