Science and Application of High-Intensity Interval Training

Authors Paul Laursen and Martin Buchheit—both well-known, expert-level HIIT researchers as well as practitioners and endurance athletes—do a masterful job of blending science-based concepts of HIIT with practical application strategies. Laursen, Buchheit, and a team of highly qualified contributors—who bring hundreds of years of combined HIIT science and application experience from across all sports—have written Science and Application of High-Intensity Interval Training to provide practitioners and athletes an understanding of the foundational principles of HIIT programming. Chapters in the first section describe five types of training, how to manipulate HIIT variables to maximize improvements in physical performance, and how to incorporate HIIT into a general training program. Readers will also learn the influence HIIT can have on fatigue, stress, and an athlete’s overall health.

The final 20 chapters each focus on a different sport and are written by leading coaches or practitioners who have successfully applied HIIT principles at an elite level in their respective sport. These chapters describe specific ways to incorporate HIIT into a training regimen for everything from combat sports to endurance events to the most popular U.S. and international individual and team sports. Each chapter also contains sport-specific preparation and competition phases, an overall one-year training program, and a brief story of how the coach or practitioner who authored the chapter used HIIT to successfully prepare an athlete for a competition.