Conor Dunne's 25-minute indoor training workout: Festive spin with surprise sprints

GCN's Conor Dunne is joined by Manon and Hank to take you through this short but tough indoor bike training session, designed to improve your sprinting and muscular endurance. For topping up your fitness over the festive period, this quick blast will be exactly what you need.

For this session, all you'll need is a bike set up on an indoor trainer, although we'd also advise keeping a towel and bottle of water nearby. A fan can help to keep you cool too. The session is based on a perceived exertion scale from 1 to 10, so you don't need any technical gadgets like power meters or heart rate monitors to join in.

• Read more: Smart trainer vs indoor trainer vs spin bike

What are the benefits of HIIT training?

HIIT sessions like this featuring lots of high-intensity efforts will improve your muscular endurance, and train your body to keep pushing even when you're fatigued.

At this time of year, though, many of us are more interested in balancing Christmas excess rather than improving power. If that's you, you should know HIIT sessions are effective calorie burners. Research suggests that interval training burns more fat than low-intensity training sessions. Because HIIT sessions break down your muscles, your body will keep burning calories during the recovery period.