HIIT with Fitbit

[Gryzor]

Hello!

I started doing elliptical workouts last month. Taking it quite seriously (averaging 7 workouts of 45-60 minutes per week) I feel I'm ready for the next step - HIIT.

My issue is, Fitbit only allows for steady intervals (xx seconds high intensity, yy seconds rest), whereas all the elliptical HIIT programs I've found have variable intervals.

So, I'd like to ask if anyone has a suggestion or two for me?

Thanks!

[Dominique]

My suggestion is: use something else (an app on your phone etc.) to provide you with the variable intervals you want and let your Charge 2 record it as regular elliptical.

The kind of customizable HIIT you want is probably going to be something avaible (via third-party apps) on the Fitbit Ionic. With current Fitbits pretty much everything is "hard-wired".

[Gryzor]

Thanks for your reply, Dominique!

Yes, my first thought was a mobile app (I'm on Android) to do that. Imagine my surprise when I could find no app that does that! Yes there are a few (not many) that allow you to customize a HIIT program, but they all offer just two basic on/off intervals with no possibility of telling it, for instance, 30secs Hi/10 low/1min high/20secs low, stuff like that... 

So, I'm still stuck 🙂 Are you aware of any apps that are more versatile?

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

Check Runtastic Pro, I’m pretty sure it allows you to create custom HIIT sessions with a warmup interval at the beginning, a cooldown interval at the end and several high/low intervals in-between of variable length. It also provides vocal feedback telling you when each interval is about to start / about to end.

And just because it is called Runtastic doesn’t mean it’s only for running. In fact, it supports a wide range of activities (though I would rather trust Fitbit for calories burned).

I just fired up Runtastic Pro and checked: indeed, you can set intervals of variable length. There are three types of interval: Slow (green), Medium (yellow) and Fast (red). Plus Warm-Up and Cool-Down (blue) at the beginning and at the end. There is a limitation to the number of intervals you can stack in a session, but OTOH HIIT sessions are supposed to be short.

[Gryzor]

Oh, that's interesting! I got Runtastic Premium a couple of weeks ago, but I haven't bought the Pro app. If it does that I guess I'm getting that too, so thanks so much for your suggestion!

It's so weird there aren't more apps for this out there, though. It'd be dead simple for a developer to do a timer with custom intervals...

Thanks again!

[MagsOnTheBeach]

I just have the flex2 so HIIT comes up for me as aerobic exercise.  I don't need anything more specific, but I'm off to look at the suggested app. 🙂

[Gryzor]

Actually, after posting this I finally found an app that does exactly what I want: Tabata Timer (there's a few of them with similar names, so check it out here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.evgeniysharafan.tabatatimer ). The free version allows up to two custom workouts, which is enough for me for the time being... It allows you to insert as many intervals as you want, and customize their duration, so although it's not a very pretty app, it's effective!