My healthy client often feels nauseous and dizzy after high intensity intervals. Is there any way to help this?
You’ve received some great thoughts, especially by Paul Thomas where he talks about checking your client’s ability to do steady-state cardio without dizziness.
You’ve mentioned that your client is healthy, but have not mention how fit he or she is in general. Your client might need more warm-up before engaging in HIIT, and a more gradual cool-down. Also, HIIT is a very individual thing; if you’re committed to giving this client a HIIT workout, you have a life-enhancing reason to do so, and you’ve determined that your client can do steady-state cardio without the same symptoms, adjust the HIIT exercise so that it’s a smaller increase above what their “normal” cardio is. So, for example, if they’re comfortable with an RPE of 5, instead of going from 5 to 9, to 5, to 9, try an activity that goes from 5 to 6, to 5, to 6, to 5, to 6. See how the client tolerates that. Then 5 to 7. And so on.
Also consider whether the activities themselves might be the culprit. Are you doing burpees or other things that drop and raise the head suddenly?