It’s important to make fitness fun and one way to do that is to turn it into a game. Enter HIIT the Game by Stack 52. HIIT is an acronym for high intensity interval training, something I used to do a lot years ago but as I’ve been plagued with minor injuries that have kept me from high impact exercises I haven’t done hiit for a while. The idea is that you do short but intense workouts giving 80-90% effort in short interval workouts. Studies have shown that interval workouts like HIIT burn fat, build muscle and help build aerobic and anaerobic fitness. So how would you make this into a game? By creating a card based game, with lots of fun bodyweight exercises whilst incorporating gameplay akin to card games like UNO and Phase 10.
In the box you get a stack of exercise cards, like lots, like more than you’d think possible for bodyweight workouts! Each exercise card has a name, photo, description, points value and a QR and URL for a video demonstration of the exercise (Seriously they thought of everything). You also get 2 dice, a set of interval cards with different interval values, draw cards and strategy cards, the strategy cards get mixed in with the exercise cards for gameplay. A lot of stuff in one box yet it was slimline enough that you could put in your luggage for travel which is what I plan on doing next month when I attended #Blogfest 🙂 The exercise cards are color coded red/core, green/upper body, blue/cardio and yellow/lower body.
So how do you play? Well there are some rules on the stack 52 HIIT game website but honestly you could make your own rules. They suggest first rolling the dice to determine the number of rounds you’ll complete (for me that was two). For more of a challenge you could roll both, if you were really sadistic, though honestly this would depend a lot on how much time you have. Then dealing a draw card for the number of exercises per round, I drew a three. Next your draw your interval cards per round/or per player I drew two for my two rounds. Then draw the assigned number of exercise cards per round (three per round in my case).
As you can see this made for a quick but intense workout. It definitely gave me a tough workout. All the time I was doing it I was glad I didn’t roll a 6, and pick a draw card of 7! What I liked is that you can quickly look up the exercises online if you aren’t sure about the description. Plus having the random aspect of drawing the exercise cards makes for an interesting workout. I tend to forget about exercises I did years ago, or have those ones I hate to do (burpees – does anyone like burpees) so having a randomness to the workout makes it fun, and pushes you outside your box.
Honestly though there are TONS of ways you could play the game. Playing in a group would be fun! You only earn points if you give 80-90% intensity, so no sandbagging or resting. If you rest then you skip points that round. Strategy cards would make group workouts interesting. These cards include:
Swap – swap unperformed exercise with another player
Extra card: give to another player to draw another exercise during their rest period
Power Up: Double the points value on one card
Shield: Block an opponent from giving you cards
The extra card option is supposed to have no point value, but imagine if you played it with a points value? Or if you played where having unused strategy cards were assigned a point value. Or playing a version with no strategy cards? The variations on playing are pretty varied! You don’t really need the draw cards you could use the dice! Maybe roll one dice for number of rounds, and the other for number of exercises or use BOTH dice for a killer workout! With this game every workout would be different for sure, and I really liked that! Definitely thumbs up!
*I received this product in exchange for a fair and honest review, all opinions are my own because I keep shit real like that.