Running HIIT circuits at Thorndon Club
Basics
The standard circuits we've been doing take about 45 minutes, so courts 1&2 need to be booked accordingly, and longer if there are drills afterwards.
A full circuit consists of 18 stations, and we cycle through these twice, for a total of 36. These are done in sets of six, with a minute of rest in between two sets. Each set consists of 6 exercises to be done for a consistent 45 seconds, followed by 15 seconds to change stations.
It generally takes about 15 minutes to set up, and less if people are helping. The best way to get people engaged is to ensure they know where to get the equipments, and give them station signs, which include setup information. Stations 1–5, 6–12, and 13–18 are a good way to partition the tasks if required, or let people figure it out for themselves.
Equipment
All equipment is by the lockers, and some of it is in locker #3. The key is between sauna and wall. You will need:
- 4 racquets (spare racquets are upstairs in the bucket by the HelloClub kiosk);
- The red bag containing ladder, cones, and jump bars;
- Wayne's battle rope;
- Martin's TRX;
- Wayne's jumping ropes;
- 2 mats or towels to keep sweat off the court
- A couple of dumb- and kettlebells
- Printed signs for the individual stations
- A phone to run the timer app (see below)
- Speakers connected to the phone
App and music
There are plenty of apps for HIIT out there; We've been using Tabata, configured as follows:
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Initial countdown | 1 minute |
| Warumup interval | 0 |
| Exercise interval | 45 seconds |
| Exercise interval beep | Referee whistle |
| Rest interval | 15 seconds |
| Rest interval beep | Boxing gong |
| Skip last | yes |
| Number of sets | 6 |
| Recovery interval | 1 minute |
| Recovery interval beep | Chinese gong |
| Number of cycles | 6 |
| Cooldown interval | 0 |
| Interval beep | Spors horn |
| Three second beep | Short beep |
| Halfway beep | Jingle bell |
It helps to have speakers so that everyone hears the beeps.
And when you have speakers, you clearly need music. Fast electronic music works well (such as Trance, Underworld, Nine Inch Nails, Chemical Brothers), but surely Metal, and other genres will also do, even disco.
Assigning people to starting stations, and kicking it off
The circuit has 18 stations and can thus accomodate at most 18 people at a time.
- Pick someone at random and assign the person to station 1;
- Pick someone else at random, assign to station 2. Tell person at station 1 to follow this person;
- Assign someone to 3, tell person at 2 to follow them, etc.
- Put yourself last, which means you'll be leading.
- Start the app countdown, which sets off the 1 minute initial countdown, allowing people to find their stations and get ready.
- At 35 seconds to go, point out the mid-way jingle the app is playing.
- Work hard…
Drills afterwards
Drills on the courts afterwards might include:
- Matchplay on court 1 (2–4 on court depending on numbers)
- Drills with 2–4 people on court. If there are 3 people, the 3rd just hits length on the other wall. With 4 people, each pair does the same drill on their half. Important to emphasise that when the ball crosses the middle line, you wait until the other ralley has finished!. Rotate every couple of ralleys. Drills include:
- Channels/lanes long only
- Channels/lanes with full length, i.e. including shorts
- Drop feeds from the back, drives by the person up front
- Feeds from the back, volleys to the back by the person up front
- Two people boasting or dropping, one person driving or playing a cross lob that has to touch the side wall
- Match play with twists, i.e. any combination of:
- An unforced error (or just hitting the tin, and serving out) yields -2 or -3 or even resets score to 0;
- Losing the point at 3, 6 or 10 points means going back to the previous level, i.e. 10→6, 6→3, 3→0. Losing again means down another level;
- Reaching the back wall immediately scores a point;
- Touching the side wall before the front wall on a straight drive immediately loses you the ralley;
- The service box is always out;
- 10-AB — King/Queen of the court with every ralley scoring, wherein a player upon reaching 10 has to then beat all the other players in a row (10A, 10B, …), and failing to do so will reset them to 7.