High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

H.I.I.T

Have you heard of it?

No I'm not talking about striking someone with a punch and no I didn't hit the "I" button twice by mistake. I always find it amusing that people don't know why they're not losing weight despite being on the treadmill for an hour. In my experience its usually girls that I see on the treadmill for 45 minutes.You all have seen the girl reading a magazine walking with a towel over the screen to hide the stats, god forbid they see their progress. People.. walking on a treadmill will no doubt burn calories, no argument there, but I like many others do not have the time nor am I willing to walk on a treadmill for a an hour or two. You must know that there are more efficient ways to not only burn calories, but also increase your cardiovascular strength and endurance.

Its okay to get sweaty in the gym! that's why its there. You need to raise your heart rate to 60-85% of its max in order to be the in the "target heart zone" which is where you begin to burn the most calories and put your body to work. Sorry for my rant, but lets get down to the point of this post. High Intensity Interval Training also known as HIIT. I stumbled upon this form of training about a year ago, and have never looked back. I have always been into running and being lean & fit. That being said I was a bit ignorant as far as my workout routine was concerned. I thought that running 2 miles in 11 minutes and some change was sufficient exercise as far as getting my heart rate up.

What HIIT is about mixing high intensity bursts of exercise with moderate intensity recovery periods. It's the quickest way to get fit, lose fat and supercharge for sports performance. It all about increasing your anaerobic threshold. An example would be running 20 minutes on the treadmill at 8 mph. This would most likely get your heart rate up at a good pace and you can expect to burn around 300 calories. While this is beneficial to long term endurance, it is not the best way to increase your cardiovascular strength. Take this same exercise for 20 minutes but instead of running at a consistent pace, you will run the first minute at around 6.4 miles per hour and the second minute at 10.4-11 mph and alternate each minute. Your rest is the jog so you never are fully at rest but you are giving your body a small window of time to recover. This helps tricking your body into spiking your metabolism so you burn more fat. The benefits are remarkable, this same 20 minute workout done using the HIIT method will burn 600-650 calories all the while burning way more fat and greatly increasing your anaerobic capacity.

Stay tuned for next week when I talk about how to avoid plateaus in your workout routines! Please continue to follow!!