6 Best HIIT Workouts With Weights To Get Fit Quick

Wanting to up your HIIT game with some HIIT workouts with weights? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

Today we are looking at some of our favorite HIIT workouts with weights that will get you hot, sweaty, and burning belly fat like crazy!

If you are someone that likes to push yourself hard and can appreciate a good workout that you will love HIIT.

Done correctly HIIT is a short workout that yields fast results including more fat loss, increasing lung capacity, increasing muscle tone, and revving up your metabolism.

When you add weights to the mix such as dumbbells, kettlebells, and barbells, for example, you can take your HIIT training up a level.

HIIT, which stands for High-Intensity Interval training is a form of cardio training but with a difference. HIIT is usually mostly anaerobic meaning your body doesn’t use oxygen to produce energy, rather it uses stored glucose and creatine to produce energy.

Anaerobic workouts such as HIIT are vigorous and because of that build-up of lactic acid, you are so used to feeling. It’s that build-up of lactic acid in your muscles that makes us fatigue and slow down. Contrary to popular belief it’s actually the build-up of hydrogen ions that give you that burning feeling and ultimately stops you from exercising, not lactic acid.

Neither the less, the more you do HIIT the better your body gets at flushing out the lactic acid and hydrogen ions to keep you training longer and harder.

HIIT is typically defined as short bursts of high energy intervals with even shorter rest periods.

A typical HIIT workout would last anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes tops, where you perform several bouts of high intensity exercise broken up with short rest intervals.

Normally work is no longer than 60 seconds long with rest periods under 30 seconds and mostly around the 10-20 second mark. The aim of HIIT is to make you work flat out with very short recovery times to keep your heart rate elevated and work rate high.

HIIT is user and ability defined, as long as you are working in intervals at your maximum you are doing HIIT.

Benefits of HIIT

HIIT can be beneficial if you are looking for short workouts that give you great results in the quickest amount of time.

It could also be your answer to breaking through a fitness or weight loss plateau.  Here are a few of the benefits HIIT has to offer.

Strengthens Bones – HIIT being a form of resistance training is effective at increasing your bone density. When you add weights to your HIIT workouts you are increasing your chances further of causing a bone-strengthening response by your body. Something that becomes even more important for women as you get older and bones naturally become weaker.

Burns Fat– HIIT can effectively reduce your body fat, in 2018 a review of 77 studies concluded that HIIT provided a 28.5% greater reduction in body fat mass in kg than moderate state continuous training.

Boost Metabolism – HIIT throws your body into the afterburn or EPOC, excess post-exercise oxygen consumption which is where your body burns extra calories returning your body back to normal, this can last up to 72 hours!

Builds Muscle – done properly, HIIT can help you to build stronger more defined muscles that will work with you to produce more energy and power during your workouts. As a beginner, you will be more likely to experience hypertrophy by doing HIIT. As you integrate weights into your HIIT workouts you will then see greater results.

Increased Lactic Threshold – this may not mean much to you but if you play sports or want to get fitter and work yourself harder then you will want to do HIIT. Because HIIT pushes your body to its max and causes you to work at and sometimes through your lactate threshold your body will become better and more efficient at clearing the build-up of lactate and even be able to tolerate it more.

What does this mean?  It means that you can now run faster, work harder, and for longer.

Reduces Resting Blood Pressure – HIIT has been proven to reduce resting blood pressure in sedentary aging men. A study in 2017 found that doing HIIT just once a week for 6 weeks can effectively reduce resting blood pressure as well as improving metabolic capacity.

Can I do HIIT with weights?

Yes! A big fat yes. When you add weight to your HIIT workouts it changes everything. The workout itself changes from being more cardio to being more anaerobic and opens doors to a whole range of new and exciting exercises that just were not possible before.

Combining weights with your HIIT workouts can be the most effective way to get the most out of your HIIT routines.

Is HIIT better than weight training?

HIIT and weight training are the same and totally different at the same time. HIIT is designed to help you get fit and burn calories fast.  Weight training can be used to lose weight, gain muscle, be stronger, be faster.

If your goal is to lose weight then HIIT can help you get there faster, then weight training alone. Weight training will work but will take you longer.

If your goal is to lose weight, then your best bet is to incorporate weights into your HIIT workouts or do a short HIIT at the end of your weight training workouts.

So, in short, is HIIT better than weight training? It’s not necessarily better but will probably get you the results you want faster.

Is HIIT good for building muscle?

HIIT isn’t the sort of training you would do to build muscle, That said as a beginner or even someone that trains now and again HIIT can be good for building muscle mass especially if you do HIIT workouts with weights in the beginning.

As you work hard, pushing your muscle to their max they will grow somewhat. What you need to remember is that for a muscle to grow it needs a stimulus, exercise, and food. If you don’t eat enough proteins and carbs and you are just burning calories all day, then you won’t gain muscle.

If you want a more athletic cut look than doing HIIT workouts with weights could be for you. If you just want big, stacked muscles then HIIT isn’t your answer.

HIIT workouts with weights

We love to add weights to our HIIT workouts, it gives you so many more options when it comes to choosing exercises to work different areas of your body.

With bodyweight-only exercises, you are limited to a lot of legs and jumping exercises, which is great for getting your heart rate up and sweating but it can get tedious.

That’s why we like to add in weights. Plus adding in weights is a great way to get you over a weight loss or fitness plateau.

Here are our most popular HIIT workouts with weights starting from the shortest in duration to the longest. You can save the image with the workout on or click the links to head over to the posts with the workout instructions and exercise demos.

Now, pick one of our weighted HIIT workouts and just do it. Don’t just look at them and wonder. Download the images with the workout on or save the link and go get it done. They are all great workouts, you’ll feel amazing after if a little tired.

GET EVEN MORE WEIGHTED hiiT WOrKOUTS WITH the HIIt Collective

The HIIT Collective is our library of workouts including weighted HIIT, no equipment HIIT and ab workouts to add to the end of your workouts.

You can get more weighted HIIT workouts for free when you join our 14-day free trial.

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