Hi, I figured I'd post in here and get a couple of opinions:

I have ME/CFS/CFIDS/whatever, it has lots of names. Which, to cut a long story short, means that you can exercise but then you're practically comatose for two days afterwards. And you need about 14 hours sleep a night. (It's a really bizarre feeling. And by exercise I mean down to and including 'walking to the corner shop'. This, for someone who cycled every day and walked everywhere, was a bit of a culture shock.)

So the good (great) news is that I'm feeling much, much better. So here I am soliciting advice.

Current routine: I run (well, run/walk/run/walk a bit more) 2 days a week, and I do a little (a very little) strength training in the way of squats and dips and lunges.

I'm really keen to try HIIT (it looks fun. No, honestly.) but I don't want to overdo it. So what do you think? HIIT once a week to start, with some other cardio? And two sessions of strength training a week?

Obviously I'll be taking it comparatively easy to begin with, but has anyone got any advice?

Thanks!

If you have a condition like that you should probably ask your doctor. HIIT is High Intensity Interval Training and if walking to the store is tiring HIIT could be dangerous.

You know there is such a thing as MIIT (medium intensity) and LIIT (low intensity) as well.

The best advice I can give here is to ask your doctor what is safe for you to do.

Point. But don't worry, doctor says I'm fine.

The main thing I wanted to say from that was that I haven't been able to do anything remotely intense up until about two months ago.

When I had a fairly rapid improvement.

This is one of the things about CFS: it comes, it goes, we know whither not it travels. It's like I just switched back on again. (I shouted 'YAY!' and did a little happy dance. And then I stopped, so I didn't get tired again.

Two months later and after some low intensity exercise, doctor is fine with my taking higher intensity exercise again. I just have to listen to my body (I didn't before which is how I ended up sick in the first place).

Regardless, medium intensity sounds about perfect. Is there a thread around here on it?

Thank you.

I couldn't find anything here and google only had 3 hits. MIIT is just like HIIT but toned down. Find a HIIT program you like and then add in more rest time and/or simply make the sprint a lower intensity run/bike/swim - however you are doing it.

Sounds good. Thanks again. I'll be running, most likely. I've only recently discovered that if you take music along, then it's actually fun! (This has been a revelation) Also, it's free, and I am poor. Yay student life!