Burn fat, build cardio stamina, gain muscle, and look like Usain Bolt, for only 20 minutes a day? (Seriously). Yes, but how?? Start incorporating hiit training routines into your workout program!
The best selling fat-burning programs in the country use interval training as part of their routines. Whether it’s doing a max set of push-ups, wind sprints, or squat jumps – this form of working out is changing how we workout to burn fat.
What is High Intensity Interval Training?
HIIT training is interval training that relies on short intense periods of movement, typically using body weight only, with short or limited recovery time. The aim is to improve speed, stamina, and cardio fitness. A routine usually is limited between 20 – 60 seconds, while a workout will consist of many sets of short, highly intense movements.
This way of training burns up significantly more calories than traditional, longer forms of cardio such as jogging or biking.
The Proof: The Journal of Applied Physiology backs these statements. The study states: increased training intensity produces greater, more substantial results than do lengthier, lower-intensity efforts.
What does this mean for you? It means that you can use this form of training to maximize your bodies ability to burn fat, without having to spend more than 20 minutes doing so.
Freeletics is a great example of hiit training that allows you to gain more while training less.
Benefits of HIIT Training
HIIT Routines put your body into an “after-burn” mode – where your body is using a higher amount of oxygen to recover from your exercise, releasing free fatty acids back into the blood to make up for your oxygen lost. Some more benefits include:
- Just 30 minutes of very intense exercise in a week within 75 minutes of regularly vigorous exercise can improve overall glucose control and increase markers of metabolism
- Lowers risk of hart and cardiovascular diseases
- Studies show people prefer this to longer, steady state continuous exercise
- Improved fat burning and glucose metabolism over longer terms, throughout the day
The Bottom Line: If you’re looking to get that shredded look you want, you’re going to want to do more high intensity training.
Start HIIT Training
Start with two sessions of high intensity interval training two times a week on non-consecutive days, gradually building up to a three day routine (Monday-Wednesday-Friday) that becomes the backbone of your workout routine. When you first start doing these routines, allow your body to rest every 48 hours to repair and get stronger.
Also, don’t push it, you’ll want to work-out for 20-25 minutes incorporating 10 minutes of warming up. If you find yourself in the gym for forty minutes or more, you simply aren’t working hard enough and need to work faster to accomplish your routine.
Tips to Incorporate HIIT Routines to Existing Regimen
There are many ways to incorporate High Intensity Training, and as long as you’re exercising at your highest sustained level for 30-45 seconds and minimizing rest and break time with the intent of keeping your heart rate maxed out or at least above 80 percent so your body struggles to keep up and continually burns fat and calories to offset oxygen loss as fuel.
If you already work out, you should start by integrating it slowly into your regular routines because higher intensity workouts can really kick your ass.
You should start with a short sprint workout like a 15 minute routine: Warm up for 5 minutes, then sprint 15 seconds, rest 45 – do this every minute until time is up, finally warm down remainder of the time.
Freeletics has a list of workouts you can do for free to get started.
Continue to incorporate routines into your regimen for about a month. You should then increase your sets by thirty seconds per repetition, decreasing rest equally. Using example above, you’d spring 45 seconds, rest 30.
After you’ve really sunk into the process, you’ll want to decrease your resting periods to 15 seconds between every 45-60 second high intensity exercise.
HIIT Training & Weights
Most routines don’t include weight regimens, however, you can use hiit training to boost fat burning during lifting sessions. While you are lifting do hiit sets in between lifts. Keep a jump rope handy and do 1 minute all out, or do 1 min all out squat jumps. This will make you exhausted, but your cardio will adjust in about 2 weeks.
Using High Interval Training for Muscle Growth
To encourage growth of the muscles, grab lighter weights and do enough repetitions to exhaust your muscles. Don’t lift weights that are above an 8 lift weight area, and no fewer than 3. As you advance work on building your resistance exercises when you can.
Also, many forget about working out their core – which is the most important muscle group you have. These 29 muscles in your abdomen are essential for your balance and stability, so working them into your HIIT training is a must, performing two or three exercises in every single workout- but no so much to exhaust you.
The Various Methods of HIIT Training
freeletics push ups
Power Method: The power method of hiit training consists of going full till, high-intensity for 30 seconds- reaching at least 80% of your total maximum BPM. This is followed by intensely slow exercise from 1 minute to 15 seconds. The point is to do this as many times as you can until you’re physically beat and cannot do any more.
Tabata Method: The Tabata Method consists of performing 20 seconds of ultra-intense exercise follow by 10 seconds of rest, then continue this for four minutes, or eight cycles. Train four times a week, and then do another day of steady-state training for workouts 5 days a week.
Hiit Training Is Everywhere
There are a plethora of work-outs out there for people to utilize to get what they need with their workouts. Modern day examples like Cross-fit take various aspects of different kinds of HIIT techniques and blend them in with various kinds of interval exercises. Insanity and Freeletics are about the same too – but they have significant differences.
Generally, if you do your research and follow a steady workout regimen designed to maximize your heart rate and keep your maximum BPM above 80% (around 90% is best) you will notice huge gains on your mobility, fat loss, muscle toning, and general health in about a month.
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