What Is High Intensity Interval Training?

By Howe Russ


It is often said that learning how to lose weight is sometimes needlessly over complicated. Despite the numerous scientific advancements we have made in the last 20 years, the old classic formulas still return the best results. One of those formulas is HIIT.

Today we'll teach you the various styles of this form of exercise as well as explaining the various myths which surround it.

If you visit any gym around the world you will find two distinctly different types of people working out. Firstly, you will meet those who are happy to spend up to an hour working out at a steady pace on an exercise bike. Secondly, you'll meet those who deem cardiovascular exercise to be too boring and therefore they ignore it and train with weights instead.

High intensity interval training represents a middle ground between both styles.

Who should be exercising this way? Well, to a certain degree absolutely anybody can get results with the many variations of interval training which are out there. It has been proven to burn fat at an increased rate and also to increase lean muscle tissue, so regardless of your overall fitness goal there is undoubtedly a place for this in your workout routine.

The main reason this type of training is so popular with those looking for the fat loss benefits it offers comes down to something called Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption, or E.P.O.C. for short. When you perform steady state cardiovascular activity you generally stop burning off calories at an increased rate the moment you finish your activity. With high intensity interval training, however, your body actually continues burning those calories at an increased rate for hours after you leave the gym, therefore increasing fat loss results.

Take a look below at the most common variations of interval training and you will be able to apply one of these methods to your own training routine easily.

* The Tabata Method

* The Sport Specific Method

* The Fat Loss Method

The Tabata method is designed for elite athletes or extremely fit individuals who are looking to increase an already high level of fitness. When you reach a level which is considered elite, you will notice gains are far harder to come by. For instance, think how hard a bodybuilder works to add an extra quarter of an inch to a muscle before a contest.

The Tabata method originated from Japan and was able to increase the VO2 Max of a group of elite athletes by a shocking 28% in just a few weeks.

Tabata intervals can be performed on any piece of equipment and the total workout time, minus warm-up and cool-down periods, is only four minutes long. Those 4 minutes contain of eight 30 second sections, each consisting of 20 seconds at maximum intensity followed by 10 seconds of light recovery.

Sport specific interval workouts can be applied to those looking to train for a particular event or improve performance for a team game. One good example of this can be performed using a rowing machine. Row 500 meters as fast as possible then perform push-ups for thirty seconds. Repeat this cycle five times and you have a great muscle building high intensity circuit class.

Finally, there are numerous people who are looking to use this training method to lose body fat. The method which has the most scientific research to support it comes from Canada. A thirty minute session which consisted of four minutes at a moderate intensity followed by a thirty second burst of maximal intensity returned superior results to any other time split.

Furthermore, regardless of whether your goal is weight loss or building muscle, recent scientific studies show that performing high intensity interval training before your resistance training increases the body's natural ability to perform both of the goals listed above.

Learning how to lose weight can be a tricky affair, with so much contradicting information in circulation. The three styles of HIIT given in today's post have the most scientific evidence to support their benefits and, depending upon which category you fit into, you will be able to fit one of these into your existing weights routine.




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