Best lifting program to complement HIIT cardio?

[CalRipkenJr]

I decided to take up HIIT running 3 days a week to help with fat loss, and was hoping you guys (and gals) could give some direction with which lifting program to follow. I was on Rippetoe's for several weeks before starting HIIT, but after this first week of both I'm concerned that it's pounding my legs & knees too hard.

My main goal is losing chubbage, and from what I've read the main thing is nutrition all the way. I'm just trying to figure out a good complementary lifting program on top of that.

Any advice for what lifting program to use would be much appreciated. Apologies if I happened to miss a similar thread when searching.

[hrdgain81]

you can really use any program that will fit in to a 2-3 day a week schedual. if your running m,w,f, and lifting t,tr,s then it would work out.

personally when I'm doing a lot of cardio i like to do either a 5x5 or a 3x5 to keep my strength up. Perhaps two or three days of fullbody workouts would work best. If your knees are taking a pounding from the running, dont forget you can do HIIT on a stationary bike, or a eliptical, or a rowing machine ... ect ect.

[Eric3237]

Also like you said, when dealing with "chub" as you say, nutrition is the most important thing. IMO, cutting to get off the last bit of stubborn fat, where cardio plus nutrition may make or break you, when your losing more fat diet is what it's all about and cardio just complements that. In other words, the diet will make or break you, the cardio will not.

If you're a beginner to weightlifting you won't find a better fit than what you are doing. I agree with Hrdgain on that. And in this case you can build a lot of strength which is going to aid you in the future. The intense nature of the workouts will aid fat loss by increasing fat buring in general. I agree with hrdgain that you should adapt your cardio to fit what you are doing with diet and training and not the other way around.