Shelly's Shares: High-Intensity Interval Training Benefits And Risks

HIIT can feel like a shortcut, but what if the thing you’re doing to get “fitter faster” is actually keeping you tired, sore, and stuck? We dig into high-intensity interval training in a practical, no-hype way, starting with what HIIT actually is: short bursts of powerful effort paired with lower-intensity movement or rest. Shelly shares how she uses intervals in her own routine, including sprint-style workouts you can do without fancy equipment, plus options to mix in explosive strength moves if your body tolerates them. 

We also walk through the real benefits people look for from HIIT workouts: a time-efficient challenge, a metabolism boost through post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), support for fat loss, maintaining lean muscle mass, and improving heart health by training the heart muscle. If you’ve been doing mostly steady-state cardio like walking or endurance running, adding a small dose of intensity can be a smart way to bring more variety and progression into your fitness plan. 

Then we get honest about the risks when HIIT frequency gets out of control. Too many high-intensity sessions can increase injury risk, slow recovery, and contribute to overtraining symptoms like irritability, poor sleep, and low energy. We talk about cortisol and why chronic stress plus excessive intensity can backfire, especially for women navigating perimenopause or menopause. Shelly's rule of thumb: keep HIIT to two to three sessions per week max, then prioritize active rest and lower-intensity movement so your muscles can repair and you can actually get stronger. 

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In Health, 

Shelly

Transcript

Why Workout Variety Matters

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Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Same thing when it comes to our workouts. Variety is key when you can challenge your muscles in various ways and do a variety of workouts that really, really, truly is ideal. Do you get confused by all of the information that bombards us every day on ways to improve our overall health and our overall wellness? Do you often feel stuck, unmotivated, or struggle to reach your wellness goals? Do you have questions as to what exercises you should be doing? What foods you should or shouldn't be eating? How to improve your overall emotional and mental well-being? Hello everyone, I am so excited to welcome you to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I will be your host. My goal is to answer these questions and so much more. To share tips, education, and inspiration around all of the components of wellness through solo and guest episodes. With 35 plus years as a health and wellness professional, a retired college professor, a speaker, and a multi-passionate entrepreneur, I certainly have lots to share. However, my biggest goal and inspiration in doing this podcast is to share the wellness stories of others with you. To bring in guests who can share their journeys so that we can all learn together while making an impact on the health, the wellness, and lives of all of you, our listeners. The ultimate hope is that you leave today with even just one nugget that can enhance the quality of your life, and that you will, we all will, now and into the future, live our best quality of lives full of energy, happiness, and joy. Now let's dive into our message for today. Hi, my friends. Welcome back to Words of Wellness. This is our Shelly's Shares episode, and welcome to you all. I am hopping in today and I'm going to jump right into the topic. I want to share a little bit about fitness, aerobic, andaerobic workouts, specifically high-intensity interval training, because I have been involved in a couple different conversations around this topic this past week. And that's really what inspired me to share just briefly today with you all some thoughts around this workout. And if you're not familiar with HIT training, it includes alternating high-intensity, powerful movements with a little bit of a rest in between. And it's it's generally known as HIIT training, high intensity interval training. Now, when we do an interval workout, that's exactly what we're doing. We're alternating a high-intensity explosive movement with a lower intensity movement so that there's that rest period. Because when we do something that's very high intensity, we can't do it for very long. So we do this interval training that provides a little bit of a rest in between the workout, whatever it looks like for you if you do HIIT training, and it can be a couple different things. And I know I've talked about and I've shared through the years about the fact that I like to run and I do so more just I enjoy it, and it's more of an endurance type of workout. It's more of an aerobic workout. However, I know that there is also a need to mix it up, to have variety within our works out with our workouts. So one thing that I do personally is I will then add some sprints. I'll do a couple different days during the week where I will go out and I will run sprints. I'll run a sprint, I'll rest a little bit, run another sprint. It is not my favorite workout, I must say. However, I understand the value and the benefit to mixing up my workouts, and I want to encourage you all to do the same. However, here is what I want to share with you all. I want to share a little bit about some of the benefits of doing the high-intensity interval training, but I also want to share a little bit of the potential risks. So here are some of the benefits. So when we're doing high-intensity training, it can really be a great way to challenge our bodies physically. And again, for me personally, I like to run, I love to walk, walking is excellent exercise for everyone. However, there's also the importance of mixing up the workout and challenging yourself and your body physically in a way that maybe you don't do on a regular basis. And the other thing about a high-intensity workout is that you can get finished faster because it's at a higher level of intensity, we can't last as long. So, for example, the running sprints. We can't go run a sprint for 30 minutes straight, right? I don't know anyone that has ever done that. I don't think it's humanly possible, but you get my point. So it's very, very effective, it's time efficient. You can do short bursts of very explosive movements, you can get a really challenging and great workout in a shorter amount of time. It also is a great way to boost our metabolism. So it's there's something that we call post-exercise oxygen consumption. It's just basically a fancy way to say after our exercise, we are burning calories. So once that exercise bout has ended, our body is still working, our metabolism is still high, the burning calories. And that's a good thing. So, with that being said, it also does support um burning fat. It also helps to support maintaining lean muscle mass, which is huge, and it also improves our overall heart health, our the condition of our heart. Now, again, our heart is a muscle, so we want to train that muscle. Therefore, it is important to still add the cardiovascular exercise, the high-intensity interval training, because we still want to make sure that we are training that heart muscle and keeping our heart strong. So those are some of the benefits, and there can definitely be a benefit to our hormones and just the the growth hormone release, it can actually support that. And as a result, then again, it also supports our metabolic health. So those are some of the benefits. And another thing I will share with everyone in the way that I do it, for example, when I go out my front door and I run a few sprints, it's easy. I don't have to go to the gym, I don't need any equipment necessarily. But what I recommend when it comes to high-intensity interval training is you want to alternate doing those explosive movements with rest, with periods of rest, but you also want to intermix some explosive strengthening movements, whether it's like squat jumps or doing some lunges where you're doing some pliometric lunges where you add a jump. And let's face it, some of us in our knees maybe can't handle that. And I appreciate that, I understand that, but that is just an example of some things that you can add into an interval training workout. Now, why did I want to talk about this today? The main reason I wanted to talk about this today is I wanted to share with you all, for any of you who are doing these sessions and these workout bouts that are more of that the higher intensity, you want to do no more than two to three max per week. No more than two, three at the very, very most. Now, a few years ago, I won't I won't mention the name of this studio. It's still around and I I I think it's still wonderful. I joined a a local studio that does pretty much all high-intensity training. And I joined it basically just to intermix it into what I was already doing for my workouts, but I knew I only wanted to go twice a week because I knew it was that high-intensity interval training. And I knew that it's it's beneficial to mix that in, add that in, but you don't want to do it too many times throughout the week. Now, why? Well, part of the reason is it can lead to burnout and over-training, it can affect our hormones, it can spike our cortisol, which can lead to fatigue and poor sleep, and it can affect our stress, our hormonal stress. So for my moms out there, my my women friends, my midlife mamas, if we are navigating perimenopause or menopause, doing some excessive intensity exercise too frequently can sometimes disrupt those hormones. And therefore, it can also affect our recovery time. So that's a really, really important thing to consider. The risk for injury can increase if we're doing these workouts too frequently, and it's definitely not the best for beginners. Um, so if you're first starting out, I wouldn't recommend this type of a workout until you get yourself a little bit more acclimated to your workouts. And then also, if we're doing this too often, it can actually elevate the cortisol. I talked about the little bit already, but chronic high cortisol levels has been linked to weight gain, fatigue, and inflammation. And the main thing I want to talk about too is the recovery time. Our bodies need time to recover. We have muscle fibers, and those fibers, my friends, need to have time to rest, regenerate, and recover. That's what helps us stay strong. That's what it helps us to continue to do our workouts, to strength train, to exercise it at this high intensity level, but you don't want to do this day in, day out. I had just heard the other day about someone in one of my coaching groups. She knows someone that takes these high-intensity interval training classes five days a week. That, my friends, is too much. You are not doing your body any favors by doing that. You are not going to get results faster, you're not going to burn more fat, you're not going to lose weight. Just the opposite is going to happen. It's going to backfire. And so that's the big reason why I wanted to hop on and share this with all of you today is to remind you that yes, high intensity interval training is important for sure. And you do want to mix up your workouts. You do want to mix up some of the kind of the more aerobic, medium intensity, low to medium intensity workouts with the higher intensity workouts. But keep in mind when it comes to the higher intensity workouts, no more than two, three at the very most. At the very, very most. And again, the interval training can be great. We can get it done quickly, it can be very effective, it can provide us with lots of energy, it can really help strengthen our body physically, but you have to really be cautious of how frequently you are doing it. So again, keep it at two to three max, no more than that. Give your body time to recover and rest. And that doesn't mean sit around and do nothing. There's what we call active rest. There is also the opportunity to just mix up and do different workouts. Maybe one day you do a high-intensity interval training workout, and the next day you do a nice long walk or you go for a bike ride, right? Variety is the spice of life, as they say. Same thing when it comes to our workouts. Variety is key when you can challenge your muscles in various ways and do a variety of workouts that really, really, truly is ideal. And I'm gonna I'm gonna finish and leave you all with this. For those of you who do work out regularly, if you ever experience, and I kind of touched upon this already, but if you are if you ever experience any kind of irritability, you're maybe not making the goals or reaching the goals that you hoped you would with your workouts, if you are having trouble sleeping, if you are not feeling your best and your energy levels are not where they should be, I want you to take a look at what your workout program has been like. Because those are all signs of overdoing it, of overtraining. So if you ever experience any of those, kind of take a little bit of a step back. Think about what you've been doing for your workouts, and maybe you need to take an active day of rest so that your body can recover, so that your muscles, your muscle fibers, everything can rest and recover. And that just helps us to be able to build upon the previous workout. When we give our muscles time to rest and those fibers a chance to repair themselves, it just helps us to be stronger for that next workout. So I hope you have found value in this. As always, take time for yourself and your wellness on this day. And until next time, have a beautiful, blessed rest of your week, and we'll see you again on Words of Wellness. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I hope you gained value and enjoyed our time together as much as I did. And if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode, I would love and appreciate it if you could share with a friend or rate and review Words of Wellness so that more can hear this message. I love and appreciate you all. Thank you for listening. And if you have any questions or topics you would like me to share in future episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through my contact information that is shared in the show notes below. Again, thank you for tuning in to Words of Wellness. My name is Shelley Jeffries, and I encourage you to do something for you, for your wellness on this day. Until next time, I hope you all have a healthy, happy, and blessed week.