Find Your Fitness Workout: HIT, HIIT, LISS, and More

I can still vividly remember my friends' reactions when I started at the functional fitness box a few years ago. When asked what we do there, I explained how a workout usually goes: after the warm-up, we generally do a HIIT session, and if the trainer thinks we don't look exhausted enough yet, we add a little Tabata on top. My friends laughed and said that with all those abbreviations and Anglicisms like HIIT, Tabata, Kettlebell High Pulls, Double Unders, Toes To Bar, Wall Balls, and many more, they were completely overwhelmed. They asked if I couldn't translate all that for them, as they didn't understand a thing.

That's how I felt at the beginning, too. Sometimes I stood in front of the chalkboard where the trainer wrote down the day's workout routine and had to ask about almost every single term and have the exercise demonstrated to me again. But at some point, you don't even notice it anymore.

Especially in CrossFit and functional fitness, it is completely standard to use the English terms for exercises and training methods like EMOM, Tabata, AMRAP. Everywhere. This has the advantage that if you want to drop in as a guest at another box (that's what training facilities are called in CrossFit) in a different city, you will almost always understand what is meant. These English terms and abbreviations can also be found in competition settings all over the world. It's like a common "language," if you will. For outsiders and newcomers, it sounds completely bizarre at first, and you have no idea what it's all supposed to mean.

The Most Common Training Methods

So today, we're shedding some light on the subject and explaining the most common terms. It doesn't hurt to familiarize yourself with a few terms beforehand to figure out which training method you might like or simply want to try out for yourself.

• HIIT stands for "High Intensity Interval Training". In the past, before everyone was throwing around super trendy terms, HIIT was simply circuit training. Extremely effective. It usually consists of several rounds where exercises alternate with a fixed rest period over a predefined timeframe. Example: At our box, that means 4 or 5 rounds with 5 stations where a certain exercise is performed for 45 or 50 seconds each. Between each station, there is a 10-second break during which you move over to the next station. Once you've completed all the stations, there is a short breather of 30 to 60 seconds before the next round begins. But you can combine this in all sorts of variations. Essentially, you give it everything your body's got for about 15 to 25 minutes. Afterwards, you might end up gasping for air and feeling like you'd rather crawl out the door than walk out of the room. Very demanding, but also absolutely great for blowing off steam after a really stressful day at the office. You won't be thinking about office problems anymore—it's impossible because you have to focus so hard on the exercise.
  
  
• TABATA is a special form of HIIT training: You train for a total of 4 minutes in 20-second increments plus a 10-second break. A "mini-unit" lasts a total of 30 seconds if you include the 10-second break. We always do 2 x 4 units/exercises, so a total of 8 time blocks over the 4-minute duration. But anyone can do it however they like. It is also possible to repeat just one exercise eight times in total. Or divide eight different exercises across the small exercise blocks—that is possible as well. This works best with bodyweight exercises, i.e., bodyweight exercises like planks, crunches, etc. Simply because the breaks are really short. There are plenty of upbeat TABATA songs that guide these short 20-second exercise phases with prompts, announcing the start and end of each mini-unit. Very convenient, so you don't have to keep checking your watch. Various fitness apps with TABATA workouts are also great; the start and end points are signaled by sounds. TABATA is short, intense, and genuinely effective.
  
  
• LISS stands for "Low Intensity Steady State". LISS training is essentially endurance training over a somewhat longer period, such as 30 or 45 minutes. You practice your chosen sport (running, swimming, cycling, or similar) at your own pace for the set amount of time. Is pushing yourself to the limit like in HIIT or TABATA not your thing, and you prefer to take it a bit easier? Then LISS training is right up your alley.
  
  
• HIT stands for "High Intensity Training". This shouldn't be confused with HIIT! With HIT, you train up to your muscular limits, often using barbells, but also other equipment or weights. Therefore, it's not for beginners, but for pros who know themselves and their bodies well and can judge quite accurately how far they can go in a HIT exercise. The effect is a very strong training stimulus for the muscle, which stimulates the muscle growth of strength athletes. So HIT is more for the advanced among us.

Regular gyms are also increasingly incorporating these training methods into their class schedules; alongside abs/legs/glutes classes, you frequently see HIIT training courses popping up. There are a few other terms that you will come across again and again in the fitness industry – apart from the exercises themselves, which are usually titled in English anyway:

• WOD is the "Workout Of The Day", which is the exercise routine for the day. A sequence of exercise sets that your trainer came up with for you.
• EMOM means "Every Minute On The Minute". With this method, you complete one or more exercises and then rest until the end of the current minute. Ideally, this rest should be around 20–30 seconds, because as you'll see, especially in the final rounds, you'll really need that break. At the start of every new minute, you start your exercise sequence all over again. The whole process repeats over a preset total duration of about 15 to 20 minutes.

I like this method because it allows me to determine, to a certain extent, how fast I complete my exercises.

• AMRAP is short for "As Many Rounds As Possible". Here again, you have a set sequence of exercises (it could be just one with a certain number of repetitions, or several) that you complete at your own pace. A total workout time of, say, 20 minutes is set beforehand, and you count how many rounds of exercises you can complete. The great thing about this is that you control your own pace. Of course, you push yourself and don't go at a snail's pace, but you still make sure to take sufficient rest between sets.

Now it's up to you to find out which training method you like best. For many of them, in addition to local CrossFit and functional fitness boxes, you can also find pre-designed exercise sets online to watch and follow along with. Today, fitness apps with various workouts are also a great way to test things out. Experiment a bit to see which style suits you best – and then get started.

The author - Melanie

Recommended fitness equipment for cardio training: