Right now I am trying to shed last 10 pounds and decided to add some cardio. My choice is HIT training.

Total time is 20-30 minutes (depends if I was lifting heavily or not)
1. run 5 minutes at 5.5 mile an hour.
2. Raise to 9.5 for 40 seconds.
3. Back to 5.5 and run for 1 minute 20 seconds (to round the time).
3. Raise again to 9.5 for 40 seconds...
....

Thus I do 4 times then I go by my heart-beat. I can 3-4 minutes at 5.5 to bring my heart rate down...

Is it too much rest between sprints or to short sprints?
How do you people do it?

Thanks.

I tend to do simple one minute on, one minute off intervals. My heart rate will end up climbing throughout the workout, as I never really let it get back down to a lower rate.

I know Zen tends to let his heart rate come back down to a certain rate before beginning a new work interval.

I think it's a matter of preference. The important thing is to have the varying intensities to switch it up for your body, not the specific timing of the intervals.

I think you are confusing HIT with HIIT. Very different things. HIT is a lifting style, HIIT is High Intensity Interval Training.

But I vary things. Generally anywhere from a 1:3 work/rest ratio to a 1:1, depending on goals. I rarely do an hard interval above 1 minute. I go as low as :20 hard intervals. A :20/:40 break is actually harder than a :60/:60 for me.

But as lblake says, if you are monitoring heart rate, you can set a restart level in your mind and coast until the HR drops enough to restart instead of using a specific recovery time.

The key is to go as hard as you can on the hard interval.

Right now I am trying to shed last 10 pounds and decided to add some cardio. My choice is HIT training.

I think you mean HIIT. HIT is different, with rtestes being the principal exponent for that here.

If you mean HIIT, then there are a lot of approaches. It really comes down to whether you use a specific time length for your intervals, or whether you use a recovery heart rate, or whether you use some other physiological recovery length (such as a fixed number of breaths).

For fat burning purposes it really doesn't make that much difference which you use as long as the hard intervals are of sufficient intensity. If you want to get all tweaked up over interval lengths, it's usually for athletics/sports reasons.

Thanks a lot guys,

I did mean HIIT, apologies for confusion...