While the past few years have seen the rise (and rise) of low-intensity workouts, like Pilates and yoga, grow in popularity, there’s still a very valid case for adding in some high-intensity interval training (HIIT) into your workouts.
For starters, this high-energy, heart-raising workout style can give your metabolism a boost while increasing your cardiovascular endurance. This sweat-inducing workout can also reduce blood pressure and cholesterol levels and help you gain maximum results in minimal time. But, better yet? You just need enough space to roll out a yoga mat and enough motivation to move your body to get going.
The good news is that this standing 30-minute HIIT workout from Eleni Fit comes with a Pilates-inspired twist. Mixing popular Pilates moves, like standing leg lifts, crunches and a roll-down, this workout gives you the best of both worlds as you’ll see and feel the benefits this low-impact form of exercise brings, but it’s wrapped up neatly into a time-saving HIIT workout.
Watch how to do this 30-minute HIIT Pilates workout
Fitness trainer Eleni suggests warming up before jumping into this workout. In total, there are around 20 exercises featured in this workout.
HIIT is a workout style that alternates between short bursts of intense exercise and brief recovery periods. Therefore, the idea with this session is to complete each exercise for 40 seconds before resting for 10 seconds. In your rest period, Eleni demonstrates how to complete the next move with the right form. This will give you enough time to just about recover before you head into the next Pilates-inspired move.
As we mentioned, all of the moves in this workout are bodyweight. But don’t be fooled into thinking they won’t get your heart rate up. For example, there’s a side lunge and reach, narrow squat kicks, balancing butt pulses and a plié side crunch followed by a reach up.
All exercises take inspiration from common Pilates moves, but instead of repeating them eight or 10 times as you might in a usual mat class, you’ll be completing them as many times as is possible (without losing your form) until the 40-second timer is up.
Doing so will help you increase your strength, give your endurance a boost, and raise your heart rate while adhering to a low-impact style of working out.
When you’ve completed the first 10 exercises, you’ll get a handy 60-second water break before ticking off the final 10.
Of course, if you find you need to rest for longer, or some of the exercises are too challenging to complete for 40 seconds, listen to your body without going over the top.
Along with being organized into a HIIT session, many of these moves are supersets, which is a training technique where two exercises are performed back-to-back with minimal rest in between. Not only can this style of training promote greater muscle growth, but it can help you get more bang for your buck as you're doing twice the amount of moves in the same amount of time.
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