How To Give Your Best Effort During a HIIT Workout

HIIT (high-intensity interval training) workouts have taken the spotlight in the fitness industry for the past couple of years. Many fitness studios have centered their workout routines based on this style of workout.

But if you are a beginner just starting to work out or new to fitness training altogether, you’re probably wondering how can you give your best effort when you have never done this before?

To give your best effort, you should give the workout your 100%. That’s it.

This means you don’t want to give 60% of your effort into your intervals, but you also don’t want to give 120% of your effort either.

You want to give your 100%, whatever that is for the day, and that’s it. If you give anything less than that, you’re not maximizing your training potential and defeating the purpose of a HIIT workout.

But if you give anything more than 100%, you’re going to wear yourself out.

However, it’s not realistic to say that we can always give it our all every single time. As long as you are trying your best for that given day, then that’s all that matters.

To give your 100%, it is important to know your optimal heart rate when it comes to a HIIT workout. You should know how much effort is too much, and how much effort is too little based on your optimal heart rate.

The optimal heart rate for a HIIT workout is about 80-90% of your maximum heart rate.

Your maximum heart rate can be calculated as 220 minus your age. Then you’ll want to multiply that number by 0.80 and 0.90 to find the range of where your heart rate should be!

Let me give you an example. If you are 20 years old, your maximum heart rate is going to be calculated as the following:

220 - 20 = 200 BPM (beats per minute)

Now to find your optimal heart rate, you will multiply that number by 0.80 and 0.90 as shown:

200 x 0.80 = 160 BPM and 200 x 0.90 = 180 BPM

So, your optimal heart rate during HIIT should be between 160-180 BPM!

You can manually check this during exercise by finding your pulse (either on your wrist or neck) and count how many beats there are for 6 seconds and multiply that by 10 to get your heart rate.

If you want to learn more tips on how to do HIIT as a beginner, go ahead and check out my article: 10 Tips on How to do a HIIT as a Beginner

To learn more about all things health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness, you can check out my website here: Fit by Sara Emily