Fighting Fit - HIIT vs LISS

What should fighters do to improve their conditioning leading up to a fight?

HIIT vs LISS

So you are preparing for a fight night and want to be fighting fit.

What are your options? What works best? And why should you even care about conditioning in the first place?

All good questions.

Firstly, a well conditioned fighter can cope with greater workloads. No, not paperwork! The better your conditioning, the harder you can fight. You can maintain a higher intensity than your opponent and most important of all your recovery improves.

Not only short term recovery in the form of catching your breath after an intense bout of sparring. Conditioning also improves your bodies recovery to training volume and load.

This means that you can lift heavier, move faster, with greater frequency and consistency.

And as you know, training consistency is KING!

Now comes the real fight, between HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and LISS (Low Intensity Steady State). HIIT is growing in popularity in gyms across the world due to it's promise of greater cardiovascular development in a shorter time frame than LISS.

Remember that consistency is king? If you train 5 - 7 days a week you are taxing your body. Stressing your body creates a stimulus which leads to performance enhancing adaptations when paired with recovery.

BUT! If you consistently and frequently train HIIT your body's ability to cope with the physical demands of HIIT will exhaust your body, leading to injury.

This is because your body's ability to recover has a limit and HIIT is designed to push you to your limits.

The answer? Moderation.

You want to use HIIT for it's benefits but not too often as you will find it's negatives which tend to be injury, exhaustion and poor performance. An example of moderation is on a day you plan to train heavy for strength, you don't want to do HIIT as a warm up because your body will be exhausted and you will sacrifice your strength training. So just do HIIT after strength training, right?

Wrong! HIIT should be carried out on a separate day or time of day, allowing time for recovery between sessions.

LISS has been used as a conditioning tool by fighters and athletes for decades, so why change a good recipe for success? As stated previously, HIIT offers more reward in the form of increased V02 max in short, intense sessions. Everyone wants to succeed and the quicker the better.

In conclusion, since we "don't want to fix what ain't broke" you can and should program both HIIT and LISS in to your week of training. On a day you plan on lifting 1RM (1 Rep Max) do NOT use HIIT for your conditioning. Instead, go for a slow and steady jog or walk in the morning before breakfast (LISS). A great example of HIIT is a circuit, you can incorporate weights, bodyweight exercises as well as plyometric (explosive/jumping movements) exercises. Choose several exercises to perform in sequence and give yourself a limited time for rest between rounds.

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