Losing Weight with High Intensity Interval Training
High intensity interval training, or HIIT, has been around for a long time. However it is only recently that the fitness world has cottoned on to its vast benefits.
HIIT involves exactly what you would think; short bursts of intense exercise with breaks in between. These short bursts do not allow your body to enter its comfort zone when exercising, thus burning more calories than conventional cardio.
A major point HIIT has over conventional cardio is that you will continue to burn calories after you have finished with your workout, thus aiding weight loss. This is due to the fact your heart rate and metabolism will elevated after you have finished your workout, for up to 24 hours. Numerous studies have shown participants lose up to nine times, more fat than traditional training.
There are many variations to the underlying HIIT formula, all of which helpo you lose fat. These include Tabata and Fartlek (named after their developers). Tabata involves taking any exercise with sufficient difficulty to get your heart rate up, performing it for 20 seconds at full intensity, followed by a 10 second rest and repeat this around 10 times (5 minutes in total).
Fartlek HIIT uses random changes in duration and intensity to shock your body into losing fat. The key to Fartlek is that it does not give your body any time to adjust, since you never know what is around the corner. Some fitness equipment has already been programmed with this sort of workout and it is only a matter of time until all equipment contains a programme of this type. Until then you could do it at home by randomly generating your next exercise, from using a random number generator on your computer (firstly assigning an exercise per number so you can't cheat!), to pulling an exercise out of a hat (just be sure to put more exercises than you are going to use in the hat so you can't predict what is coming up).
HIIT is incredibly versatile and most people find it more enjoyable, since you are not just mindlessly slogging it out for minutes or hours at a time. So what is there to lose? Why not try one of the programmes BudgetBodyBuilding.com has provided below.
Example of HIIT exercises
Boxing (heavy bag)
Boxing (Speedball)
Burpees
Cycling/stationary bike
Elliptical trainer
Press-ups
Rowing
Skipping
Sprints
Squat jumps
Stair climber
Swimming
So, in short, anything that gets your heart rate up will work a treat.
Example HIIT programme
Warm up: 5 minutes 50% effort
Interval one: 1 minute at 75%
Interval two: 30 seconds at 30%
Interval three: 30 seconds at 85%
Interval four: one minute at 30%
Interval five: 20 seconds at 90%
Interval six: two minutes at 50%
Interval seven: 30 seconds at 80%
Interval eight: one minute at 50%
Interval nine: 20 seconds at 90%
Warm down: 3 minutes
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