Skill-developing cardio/HIIT that fits well with F1?

I'd like to include some cardio or HIIT to my F1 schedule. My motivation for training in general revolves around learning new stuff (hence my fondness of F1). Therefore I'm not so good with treadmills and such.

This thread is for suggestions for cardio or HIIT that:

1. Doesn't interfere with F1, which is the main priority.
2. Develops new skills, i.e not boring, which kills motivation.
3. Doesn't require expensive equipment. The less equipment, the better

In order not to interfere with F1, the cardio should probably involve 80-90% or so lower body work. I know that I won't personally be pushing my luck with burpees, man-makers, kettlebell clean & jerks and so forth. I like these kinds of drills, but they'll probably eat into F1 recovery - Am I wrong?

So, I'll chip in with a couple of suggestions. Looking forward to hearing other suggestions. Let's get creative!

Barefoot running:

I'll pick this up again this spring-summer-autumn. Will start very gently, and will probably end up running for no more than 20-30 minutes once a week - Any more than that is asking for trouble in my case, due to my knee. In my experience, there's a lot of skill involved. In the past, as soon as I let the form go, my right knee began to ache. Staying focused on proper form resulted in painfree running.

Jump rope:

There's so much skill, coordination, endurance to be learned here, it's just unreal. 10 minutes of intensive mixed skipping after F1 would probably work magic on one's conditioning.  Skipping also has much lower impact on the joints. The rope is easy to pack for travelling, as well. 

Im doing f1 4 days a week and yesterday I did

4 rds

15 burpees

15 doubleunders

I am starting a new week of f1 today . All you can do is try something and see if it works for you. Good luck with your HIIT adventure.

Hill Sprints! Or just sprints, few 60m or 100m three times a week

If it doesn't impact recovery, can't see why not.

m6shifter said:

Im doing f1 4 days a week and yesterday I did

 

4 rds

15 burpees

15 doubleunders

 

I am starting a new week of f1 today . All you can do is try something and see if it works for you. Good luck with your HIIT adventure.

Interesting - How do the burpees feel on top of F1?

Prior to F1 and H1 I got my conditioning mainly from HIIT type training consisting of calisthenics movements done in an interval fashion. Since starting F1/H1 about 4 weeks ago I've realized that too much other body weight conditioning interferes too much with the GB training. Although the GB sessions are short they tax both the musculature and nervous system. I ended up getting a spinning bike and now do 20 to 30 minutes of slow riding after my GB sessions. Once or twice a week I also throw in short, intense intervals on the bike. I have found this to be a great complement to GB in the sense that I get decent cardio benefits without interfering with the strength training at all.

Kettlebell swings work well for an interval-style conditioning element as well.  They are lower body dominant and will skyrocket your heart rate.  I've used them a few times after my F1 workouts.

mm356 said:

Kettlebell swings work well for an interval-style conditioning element as well.  They are lower body dominant and will skyrocket your heart rate.  I've used them a few times after my F1 workouts.

Yup, absolutely true. Did alternating sets of 20 swings @32kg and 50 alternating knee-lift rope jumps yesterday, as many rounds as possible in 5 minutes, was pretty smoked after that. Would be interesting doing 10 minutes straight.

I am on the side of jumping rope. The coordination and tempo helps in other modalities.

Before I had to stop F1 and H1 I would do 5 min of jump rope for warm up and 10 min of jump rope on cool down.

When I restart the F1 & H1(F7/ H1, 4day/ wk). I will progress my jump rope cool down with the series.

My jump rope mastery template. Lol.

14, 16, 18, 7

20, 22, 24, 10

26, 28, 30, 13

Sparring and rolling is the vast majority of my cardio/endurance.

I do run stairs a couple times a week-- on H1 days, afer H1 work. It varies a lot depending on what else I do that week, but would generally involve running up to the 15th floor 5-10 times. Sweating demons in the Aussie summer.

Somalie said:

My jump rope mastery template. Lol.

14, 16, 18, 7

20, 22, 24, 10

26, 28, 30, 13

Dammit, now I'm actually trying to make sense of those numbers! 

I feel good today after f1 workout. I am in the 6th week so 9reps . Now the next cycle it might be tougher doing burpees and du. Will see I am figuring this out also and I like burpees and DU'S so during the 9th week I might try 10 reps of ea. instead. When it gets warmer out I might add a good jog in the week . I am sick of rowing and spinning all winter long I need some type of change for  cardio this spring.

Basic tumbling elements for reps is a good for this. ("Basic" here is anything easy enough that you can do it when short of breath and dripping sweat).

Examples include:

- forward/backward rolls

- forward roll to handstand

- Endo rolls

- back extension rolls

- roundoffs

- cartwheels

- handsprings

- forward rolls to handstand pirouettes

m6shifter said:

I feel good today after f1 workout. I am in the 6th week so 9reps . Now the next cycle it might be tougher doing burpees and du. Will see I am figuring this out also and I like burpees and DU'S so during the 9th week I might try 10 reps of ea. instead. When it gets warmer out I might add a good jog in the week . I am sick of rowing and spinning all winter long I need some type of change for  cardio this spring.

I'm battling those 5x15 pushups for the time being, and will have to go at least one more microcycle before I master them. Adding burpees to that equation would probably be bad news for my elbows, not to mention that my shoulders are completely shot when finished with the 5x15. I don't think I'd be able to do many burpees, really. Double unders work well though, also when F1 goes high volume. I think you could easily crank up the volume on those.

Hari_Seldon said:

Basic tumbling elements for reps is a good for this. ("Basic" here is anything easy enough that you can do it when short of breath and dripping sweat).

 

Examples include:

- forward/backward rolls

- forward roll to handstand

- Endo rolls

- back extension rolls

- roundoffs

- cartwheels

- handsprings

- forward rolls to handstand pirouettes

Hari, those are excellent suggestions, although I suck badly at any kind of tumbling, but hey, this could be my shot at getting acquainted with some of those movements.

Ravn said:

Hari, those are excellent suggestions, although I suck badly at any kind of tumbling, but hey, this could be my shot at getting acquainted with some of those movements.

The only way to master the basics is by doing them.

A lot of them.

@Hari: Alas, you are right. I'll see if I can incorporate some of those. The major barrier is lack of a decent surface to do the rolls: Either hard wooden floors or cramped spaces, but where there's a will...

What are those Endo rolls? A forward roll while in splits?

An Endo roll is a forward roll from handstand, through straddle-L, back to handstand. Some people call them "Stalder rolls", too.

yes I agree with you ravn  I know I will have to adjust probably next week when it goes to 5 sets. Thats alright if I cant fit HIIT because of fatigue. Thats why I bought F1 it is priority 1 over all other workouts.  Again good luck with your choices.

How frequent are you guys doing HIIT sessions? 3x per week? I'm trying to improve my speed on the soccer field, so I'd like to do sprints every week. But I know that 3x per week with sprints would be hell on my deconditioned calves. How does 2 conditioning days per week sound? I would rotate between sprints, burpee, and jump rope intervals.

Jerry Mangona said:

(...) sprints, burpee, and jump rope intervals.

Burpees and jump rope won't increase your speed... Why bother?

three short sprint sessions every 2 weeks (after a thorough warm up) :

1- 8-12 x60m (2 sessions) - move it uphill (on a bridge for instance) after 6 months.

2- 4-6 x 250m  (one session)

I have found that simply biking to and from work every day (16-20 km per day in total, divided into 4 roughly equal intervals) works very well for basic cardio. In addition to this, there is some sparring/rolling which also helps.

In my experience (on a hard concrete surface) skipping can be pretty hard on your feet if you're not careful.  Personally I loved it and I miss it but I was getting some pretty weird pains in my smaller foot bones and my shins.

Tumbling is great, even if you just include a small session of rolling around on the floor.

For a weirder suggestion, try setting a clock for half an hour and just transitioning between lying down on the floor to standing up. 

Bipocni said:

(...) try setting a clock for half an hour and just transitioning between lying down on the floor to standing up. 

That's a long time to spend getting up and down ... you are setting him up for a week of DOMS hating you, you evil you!