Can HIIT workouts build muscles?
As a person who is on social media a lot, I came across an acronym I know closely quite a lot of times. Everybody now is talking about HIIT workouts and exercises, a lot of questions, and as HIIT is somehow a new terminology, the confusion is real.
Basically HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, it’s basically a type of exercise based on cardio, resistance or both at the same time.
HIIT workouts can be very advantageous as it for sure burns a lot of calories, helping you reduce body fat and water retention, but also can play a huge role in decreasing blood sugar levels in your body along with insulin sensitivity, just like any other serious workout you might engage in.
Now that we mentioned that HIIT will help you for sure to lose weight -with consistency of course- does it somehow help you build muscles?
Building Muscle: What does it take?
1. How do we build muscle?
Before we talk about how HIIT affects the muscles, let’s talk about muscle building, and dive for a second on the key factors that have to be present to stimulate the muscle.
- Progressive Overload:
For a muscle to grow, it needs stress, and that’s how bodybuilders build big muscles, the stress is the weight load applied on the muscle.
But, the overload should be added progressively by increasing the weight, repetitions, or intensity over time. Your muscles adapt, and to keep them growing you need to challenge them more.
- Proper Recovery:
As we always say, a muscle that doesn’t rest doesn’t grow, recovery and rest are very important for muscle growth, as muscles grow during periods of rest, not while you’re working out.
Rest and recovery allow the muscle fibers to repair and become stronger. This includes getting enough sleep, taking rest days between intense workouts, and managing overall stress.
- Rich nutrition:
You challenge the muscle through the overload, and you let it recover through the proper sleep, stretching, and rest, what is there to do more?
Nourish it!
Nutrition plays a vital role in muscle growth. Consuming enough calories, particularly from protein, is essential for muscle repair and growth. Protein is a key nutrient for building and repairing muscle tissue, so it’s important to have an adequate intake throughout the day.
2. Resistance Training and Muscle Growth:
Resistance training is often considered the gold standard when it comes to building muscle. It involves exercises that use external resistance—such as dumbbells, barbells, or even bodyweight exercises—to challenge the muscles. This type of training is specifically designed to create the tension needed for muscle fibers to tear and rebuild, resulting in muscle growth.
While lifting heavy weights is the most common method of resistance training, it’s important to keep in mind that resistance can also come from other sources, such as bands or machines.
Basically, resistance is the key that the muscles need to be sufficiently stressed to initiate the process of growth.
3. How Does HIIT Affect Muscle Growth?
So, now that we understand and have the key components of muscle building in mind, where does HIIT fit into the equation? While HIIT is primarily known for its calorie-burning and cardiovascular benefits, it does offer some potential for muscle growth as well—though the extent to which it can help you build muscle may be more limited compared to traditional resistance training.
HIIT workouts usually incorporate both strength training and cardio, meaning that, depending on the structure of the workout, you may be using resistance exercises (such as squats, lunges, push-ups, or kettlebell swings) alongside high-intensity bursts of cardio. These bursts of activity can certainly stress the muscles, and with consistency, you may see some muscle tone and endurance improvements.
However, the issue is that the intensity and volume of most HIIT workouts may not be enough to trigger significant muscle hypertrophy. While HIIT can be intense and engaging, it often doesn’t allow for progressive overload in the same way that traditional weight lifting does. The resistance you’re using in most HIIT circuits (like bodyweight or light weights) may not be sufficient to create the same level of muscle damage required for growth.
Building Muscle: What does it take?
1. Lack of Progressive Overload:
As mentioned earlier, muscle growth thrives on progressive overload—gradually increasing resistance or intensity to push muscles beyond their comfort zone. Most HIIT workouts don’t consistently provide this level of resistance. They often mix bodyweight exercises with minimal weights, which may not offer the load necessary for significant muscle gain.
2. High-Intensity Focus on Cardio:
HIIT primarily focuses on maintaining high intensity, typically for short bursts followed by recovery periods. This means the workouts often involve more dynamic, full-body movements rather than isolating specific muscles with controlled, resistance-based exercises. While this is great for improving cardiovascular health and burning fat, it’s less effective for building larger muscle mass.
3. Fatigue and Recovery:
HIIT is intense, and while it helps with endurance and fat loss, it can also leave your body fatigued. For muscle growth, recovery is paramount. Excessive HIIT without proper recovery time may hinder the recovery process, making it harder for your muscles to repair and grow effectively.
4. Can HIIT Be Effective for Muscle Toning?
That said, HIIT can still be beneficial for toning muscles, particularly when combined with other forms of strength training. It may help improve muscle endurance and can enhance your overall athletic performance. While it may not build significant muscle mass compared to lifting heavy weights, it can give your muscles a defined and lean appearance, especially when paired with a proper diet and fat loss regimen.
For individuals looking to improve overall fitness and body composition—without necessarily aiming for huge muscle mass—HIIT can be an excellent way to achieve toned, sculpted muscles. It combines strength and cardio, which allows you to both build muscle endurance and burn fat, leading to a leaner physique.
HIIT and Muscle Endurance vs. Muscle Hypertrophy
One of the key benefits of HIIT workouts is their ability to improve muscle endurance, but this doesn’t necessarily translate into muscle hypertrophy (growth).
Muscle Endurance:
Muscle endurance refers to the ability of a muscle to sustain prolonged exertion over a period of time. HIIT, due to its high-intensity nature and the inclusion of exercises that challenge your muscles in different ways, helps improve the endurance of those muscles. When you’re performing quick bursts of exercise, like jump squats, burpees, or mountain climbers, your muscles are being worked repeatedly with minimal rest, forcing them to adapt and improve their ability to perform for longer periods without tiring.
This increase in muscle endurance is a major benefit of HIIT, especially for individuals looking to boost their stamina, improve athletic performance, or achieve more toned muscles. The repeated, high-intensity efforts allow your muscles to become more efficient at managing fatigue, enhancing overall performance.
Muscle Hypertrophy (Growth):
However, muscle hypertrophy, or the increase in muscle size, is a different process. Hypertrophy typically requires the muscles to be subjected to progressively heavier loads or high levels of tension for longer periods of time. This means lifting heavier weights, focusing on higher sets and reps, and allowing for sufficient recovery between sets to induce the muscle breakdown necessary for growth.
HIIT, while intense and effective for endurance and fat loss, doesn’t provide the sustained, targeted load required for hypertrophy. Since HIIT involves shorter bursts of activity followed by periods of rest, the muscle is often not under tension long enough or with enough load to stimulate significant growth. For example, performing a set of push-ups for 30 seconds in a HIIT circuit might improve your ability to do push-ups more efficiently, but it won’t necessarily lead to larger muscles unless you progressively add more resistance or volume over time.
In other words, while HIIT will help improve your muscles’ ability to perform more repetitions of an exercise and delay fatigue, it’s not as effective at inducing the muscle breakdown required for hypertrophy. To achieve significant muscle growth, a more targeted resistance training program with heavier weights and progressive overload is necessary.
So, while HIIT is excellent for improving endurance, boosting cardiovascular health, and increasing calorie burn, it doesn’t provide the same type of stress to the muscles as traditional strength training, which is key to muscle hypertrophy.
Combining HIIT with Resistance Training for Muscle Building:
For those who are serious about building muscle, incorporating traditional resistance training into your routine alongside HIIT could offer the best of both worlds. By doing HIIT on certain days and focusing on strength training on others, you can stimulate muscle growth through progressive overload, while also benefiting from the fat-burning and cardiovascular advantages of HIIT.
In summary, while HIIT isn’t typically the best method for building large amounts of muscle, it can certainly help with muscle endurance, fat loss, and overall toning. To maximize muscle growth, it’s best to pair HIIT with resistance training, ensuring you’re progressively challenging your muscles while also giving them the necessary recovery and nutrition to thrive.