Taking SIT For A Spin

Peloton has recognized the interest in SIT classes—especially among women of a certain age—and created a collection of classes taught by Christine D’Ercole. This week when the weather wasn’t great for running, I decided to take her SIT classes for a spin.

Taking SIT For A Spin

You’ve probably heard of HIIT—high intensity interval training. SIT—sprint interval training—is similar but different, with higher intensity efforts and longer recovery intervals. Experts say SIT can be particularly beneficial for menopausal and perimenopausal women because the higher intensity intervals recruit fast-twitch muscles that can help prevent falls, and the combination of higher intensity and sufficient recovery can fire up your metabolism without being over-taxing.

Christine’s SIT collection has 6 classes. This week I took the main 20 min, 30 min, and 45 min classes where she explains the theory and the process. As you can see from my metrics, all classes have a long warmup. The 20 min class had four 30 second sprint intervals, the 30 min class had six 20 second sprint intervals, and the 45 min class had 9 sprint intervals in 3 blocks of 30 sec/20 sec/15 sec.

Christine explains that the sprint intervals should be so challenging that you can’t hold the intensity to the end. By that rule, I didn’t do all of mine hard enough, but I did hit higher outputs than I usually reach in “normal” interval classes (Zone 7 on my Power Zone bar).

For long-term training, she suggests doing the 20 min class 2-3 times a week, the 30 min class 1-2 times a week, or the 45 min class once a week, with easier classes in between. I think I’ll try to do the 30 min classes regularly—the three other classes in the collection are 30 min.

Weekly Wrap

What else did I do this week? Here are a few highlights.

Sunday after church I hopped on my treadmill and took Matty’s pride class as a run. Mara made an appearance dressed as Lady Liberty. Matty posted an IG video of the team effort it took to get ready.

Mara is a chardonnay-sipping mom of two teenage boys from New Jersey

Tuesday it was pretty humid, but Scooby and I managed 4 miles,

Thursday was a bit nicer and I was working for home, so I went for 5 miles.

Saturday was too muggy to run with Scooby, so I stacked two Peloton classes on my treadmill. Jess’s class had four 3 min intervals at “challenging” or “hard” pace, which wore me out for Jon’s class. Jon’s class is coached as a walk + run class, and I did walk for the first 30-60 sec of each recovery. 🥵

Garmin says it was Global Wellness Day

I also did most of the Summer of Sizzle classes from my Peloton Breakthrough Crew group calendar.

I’ll probably skip all those Pilates classes ….

A huge thank you to Deborah and Kim for hosting the Weekly Run Down link up.

Have you heard of SIT training? Do you enjoy interval training?