HIT-Running
21 Students (18 years old) of a performance course at Wohlen high school trained during 8 weeks for a 10 km city run in Luzern. One fixed HIIT-training per week was performed during the regular lesson, the students added one ore two units, following their own schedule.
Before and after the intervention, endurance performance was measured by Conconi-test. Maximum heartrate was evaluated by the highest pulse reached during 8 weeks of training/ testing and competition.
Apart from these results, students reported their weekly sports activities outside school and their motivation and commitment for the training sessions. Their assessment was correlated with the individual progress in running performance.
During HIT-sessions, heartrate was continuously measured and divided into heartrate-zones according to individual HRmax:
- Zone 1: 0-80% HRmax
- Zone 2: 81-85% HRmax
- Zone 3: 86-90% HRmax
- Zone 4: 91-95% HRmax
- Zone 5: 96-100% HRmax
- Zone 5a: 98-100% HRmax
Overall, time in the highest heartrate Zones increases with longer intervals. With longer breaks in between performance the share of lower intensity increases.
The highest share of very high intensity was reached in competition; even in the 10 km city run, the share of Zone 5 and 5a was 26,4% resp. 1,8%!
There was no group effect in running performance; nevertheless, students with relatively low sports activities outside school but high commitment for the training made remarkable progress (colors correspond with students):
