This post is more generally about things to consider when programming for any type of conditioning. However, they become more relevant as the number of intervals and modalities increase.
During my time coaching and in conversation with other coaches, the topic of conditioning and programming HIIT workouts often pops up. A common issue is that while we have a good understanding of energy systems and how to manipulate them, how do we know our training is actually achieving what we want it to! How do you quantify conditioning workouts in terms of the workload they place on an athlete and how can we track it.
Programming
The first half of this post will focus on what I believe are the most important things to think about and often the easiest to manipulate. These factors make up the framework and structure of how the session runs and what you hope to achieve.
Intensity
The first thing to consider is the intensity at which you want your athlete/s to work at. There are so many ways you can break down the intensity of conditioning. For the sake of this post, it doesn't really matter. It is simply (IMO) the very first thing you need to consider.
However, I don't just want you to think about what intensity your athlete is "working" at, I want you to think about what intensity you want their "recovery" periods to be. Do you want total rest, active recovery, or a certain RPE etc?
Consider both work and rest period intensities
Duration
After establishing the desired intensities of your work and rest periods, you must consider how long you want each period to be. It is important you match the time frames to the desired intensities in order to achieve your desired stimulus.
Make sure you consider work period duration along with rest period duration and how they interact / the effect they will have on the body's systems. You also need to consider total workout duration. It is never a bad thing to know exactly how long you require your athletes to work for, whether for monitoring purposes or simply fitting their daily and weekly routine into place.
Consider both work, inter-rep and inter-set rest durations
Number of Reps & Sets
Yes, believe it or not, reps and sets are not just for the weight room. Although, many texts, coaches and books seem to call sets "series" when it comes to conditioning. it doesn't really matter what you call it, just make sure you consider it.
Understanding the intensities and durations of work and rest periods allows you to focus on the stimulus you want to achieve from each rep and series. Understanding the total amount of reps and series allows you to dictate the stimulus of the entire workout.
Consider no. reps per series and no. series
Quantifying & Monitoring
This section could easily be its own entire blog post and quite likely will be at some point! For now, I am going to try and keep it fairly broad and inclusive. The simplest way to quantify a session is to understand that workload is the product of intensity and duration. It is then important to remember that the best we can do is to produce an educated guestimate! In order to understand whether or not a workout has achieved the desired outcome is to track both internal and external variables.
​Examples of External Variables | Examples of Internal Variables |
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By monitoring both internal and external variables you can begin to match durations and frameworks to your desired stimulus. Understanding an athlete's HR at different velocities and Power Outputs allows you to more accurately programme immediately and in the future. The more you do, the more you will be able to narrow in on the exact outputs you are looking for.
In addition to this, you can start to not only quantify how much work has been done (duration) but at what intensity. Thinking back, this then allows us to give an educated guess at the workload of the session (workload = intensity x duration). I am fully aware that this is an arbitrary value/ way of doing things. However, in a real world setting I truly believe this is a million times better than simply relying on "coaches eye" and past anecdotal experiences.
Start to take control of your programme and monitoring and gain a true insight to what is actually being done. The best resource I have ever come across for this type of thing is the "Science and Application of High-Intensity Interval Training Solutions to the Programming Puzzle" - Paul Lauren, Bartin Buchheit
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