Marie Claire Australia September 2017

PHOTOGRAPHED BY NATALIE JEFFCOTT/STOCKSY.COM. TEXT BY LUCY WATERLOW.

*“NATIONAL HEALTH SURVEY: FIRST RESULTS, 2014-15”,

AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS

180 marieclaire.com.au

A

fter training for a mara-

thon and sustaining an

injury to my sesamoid – a

part of my body I never

knew I had (it’s a pea-shaped bone in

the ball of the foot) – I was advised to do

“moderate” exercise. This meant that

my go-to High Intensity Interval Train-

ing (HIIT) sessions, which involved

working at maximum capacity for a

minute then resting for 30 seconds in

between bursts, had to go. I wondered if

it was worth exercising at all if I couldn’t

give 100 per cent. Thankfully, accord-

ing to a new wave of thinking, it is.

The latest buzz-acronym in the

fitness world is LISS (Low Intensity

Steady State), the antithesis of the

“go hard or go home” philosophy.

Experts are purporting the value of

exercise with less of the pain, in a zone

where your heart rate doesn’t reach its

maximum capacity. “The intensity

of LISS is 60 to 80 per cent maximal

heart rate, which is generally referred

to by scientific studies as moderate-

intensity exercise,” says Dr Kat

Holloway, senior lecturer in physiology

at Liverpool Hope University in

the UK. In comparison, if your heart

rate hasn’t reached at least 85 per cent

capacity in a HIIT session, you haven’t

been working hard enough.

FITNESS RULES

THE NEW

Forget heart-pounding HIIT sessions – there’s a new exercise

trend in town. For gain with less pain, think low intensity