Typically throughout the training week (especially if you train with us at Hammer Athletic) you would have a major focus on the big lifts like squats, dead-lifts and lunges. If you combine this with a few conditioning classes which usually include squat variations, lunges, running, plyometrics, pushing and all things complex and challenging – you’re looking at significant loading on your lower body.

The lower body constitutes most of our muscle mass, so it is receiving the lion’s share of muscle damage and requires more recovery time. Given you’ve got to factor in 40+ hours a week to earn a living we don’t really have time to complete adequate recovery modalities to get us up and ready for the next workout.

If you aren’t careful and loading on the body isn’t measured, fatigue will start to alter your motor patterns and therefore make you recruit the wrong muscles here and there to achieve prescribed movements. When we start to compensate or start to recruit poor movement patterns due to fatigue, we usually end up black hawk down (i.e. strained or injured).

To combat this, we have designed a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) class that takes place later in the week which minimises injury risk by reducing load off the lower extremities while still giving us a high intensity workout that helps with fat loss and fitness.

This workout will constitute things like battling ropes, grinder, assault bikes, med ball slams, rower, prowler pulls, boxing and any other combination or exercise that doesn’t require impact on the feet or legs. This is also a perfect workout for the guys who hate running or have lower joint problems or pain. It will still give you a similar outcome as our HIIT sessions while being that little bit more mindful of the lower body.