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* There is no direct evidence to indicate if HIIT will help athletes focused on improving their performance in events lasting longer than an hour. However, it seems reasonable that HIIT would provide some benefits. Including 1 or 2 Wingate or WinTab HIIT sessions per week may be appropriate. As noted in the prior bullet point for shorter duration athletes, care should be taken to monitor [[TRIMP| Training Load]] and [[Training Monotony]]. As with athletes focusing on events lasting less than an hour, the stationary bike has the lowest injury risk, but there may be benefits to other training modes. However, athletes competing in longer duration events typically don't have the same need for the very high paces that are sometimes seen at the end of shorter events.
* There is no evidence to suggest that HIIT can be used to replace Continuous Moderate Exercise such as the [[Long Run]] that is a core part of endurance training.
=Incorporating HIIT In Your Training Regime =Here are some suggestions for adding HIIT to your training. These are not hard and fast rules, as there is a lot of individual variability.* HIIT sessions should be considered hard workouts, so don't try to replace easy or rest days with HIIT while leaving your hard training as is. * If your existing training is not already structured around hard days interspersed with rest days, then HIIT should be distributed through the week and you should take it easier on other days. * If you are already structuring your workouts around hard days, you should replace a hard workout with HIIT rather than adding to your workload. (Monitoring your [[Training Monotony]] may help prevent [[Overtraining]].) It * If you're looking to increase your training load, then HIIT may be possible an option. I would recommend starting off by replacing a hard workout with HIIT, then adding the original workload back over time. Remember that it can take several weeks for the additional fatigue to manifest itself, as fatigue builds up over a remarkably long time. * One approach to using HIIT to increase your workload would be to incorporate a HIIT workout with a moderate length long run, but there. There's not much evidence to know the optimum approach, or how this might change the effectiveness of HIIT. It seems likely that the HIIT would create additional fatigue and [[Glycogen Depletion]], which would make the run seem much longer than the distance would suggest. For instance, a 16 mile moderately long run could be replaced by a HIIT and 10 miles. The exact details are going to be quite individual, so experiment based on feeling. * Another way of increasing your training load via HIIT would be to use the HIIT workout as a second workout on a hard day. This may be of particular value if you're [[How Often To Run| only running 3-4 days per week]] (as I recommend.)
=Types of HIIT=
There are various different protocols for performing HIIT. While the Tabata is probably the most widely recognized name in HIIT, it is one of the least studied and the least used.