I did some HIIT with two machines in my store today - one is a summit trainer made by Superweigh SEG and the other is a commercial airdyne I sell. First I did John Meadows' preferred protocol of 45 seconds steady with no resistance followed by 15 seconds of OH GOD A BEAR IS CHASING ME AND IT HAS A GUN with the maximum resistance. I did that for 20 minutes on the summit trainer. Because it's on an incline and uses a "Driving down and back" motion it hits the glutes and hips very nicely. By the end of the 20 minute period I'd done 2.3 miles on the 25 degree slant. Obviously this has exactly no correlation to how much real ground I would've covered, but the point is to try to beat that next time.
After that I did five minutes of 30/30 on the airdyne, standing upper-body only. I take the seat all the way out so I can stand over it with a wide enough stance that the pedals don't touch me. If you really try to rip on it as hard as you can during the work intervals then it's surprisingly hard on the abs and obliques, since they're responsible for slowing, then reversing the momentum each time the handles reach their end ranges. I find it to be great pre-hab correlation for BJJ, since the majority of abdominal and lower back injuries in BJJ occur while either trying to generate rotational force, or resisting it.
Cardio machines aren't typically my first choice for conditioning but they do have their place and they do make the training easily trackable and programmable, which I like. As long as it's a machine that is set up to hit large, strong muscle groups in compound ranges of motion at high intensity with comfortable ergonomics then it works great. Concept 2 rowers are very, very good but an airdyne is a great choice for a BJJ school since it's so compact.
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