High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) - What It Is And How To Do It By Yudi Kerbel http://www.losefatatwork.com

High intensity interval training (or HIIT as it’s known for short) is fast becoming a huge phenomenon in the fat loss arena due to its tremendous capability to burn away body fat and rev up your metabolism in record time.

Recent research has shown that interval training burns 9 times more body fat than your average slow cardio workout, which would be remarkable in itself.

But what’s even crazier is that it achieves these amazing results in just a fraction of the time that traditional cardio workouts take.

So my aim in this blog post is to simply and clearly explain to you exactly:

* What interval training is

* How to do it

* And how to adjust the intensity so that it produces the optimal results for you

What is interval training?

Simply put, interval training means training for a period of time at a high intensity and then training for a period of time at a lower intensity, alternating between these two phases for a given length of time.

So how do I actually ‘do’ interval training?

Well, let me demonstrate by showing you an example.

If you were doing an interval training routine where you were using running as your high intensity exercise and resting as your low intensity exercise, your interval training session might look like this:

Run for 20 seconds

Rest for 20 seconds

Run for 20 seconds

Rest for 20 seconds

Repeat for a 4 minute duration

Essentially what you want to do is pick an exercise for your high intensity period and then aim to do as many reps as you can within your high intensity time frame.

So, if you were running, as in the example above, you would aim to run as fast and as far as you could within those 20 seconds.

If, however, you were doing bodyweight squats or jumping jacks for your high intensity period, you would simply try and do as many squats or jumping jacks as you could within those 20 seconds.

For the low intensity period, you want to either pick a relatively low intensity movement, such as walking or glute bridges or even a mobility exercise, and do that during the allotted time frame.

Or, if you’re really going all-out during your high intensity phase, you can just rest for the low intensity period instead.

The idea is that you really push yourself during the high intensity phase and then use the low intensity phase to allow your body to recover somewhat before pushing yourself through the high intensity phase again.

How do I adjust interval training to my current level of fitness?

* When you’re just starting out on your workout program and are not used to rigorous exercise, it’s important that you don’t go too intense too fast.

What you want to do is start out at a moderate level and work your way up from there.

A good typical starting point that I use with my clients is to use brisk walking as your high intensity phase, and casual walking as your low intensity phase.

If you were to rank intensity of effort on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being all-out max effort and 1 being almost no effort at all, you would want your brisk walk to be around a 6 and your casual walk to be around a 3.

You want to initially keep your high intensity phases short and your low intensity phases longer, and slowly increase the high intensity duration while decreasing the low intensity duration until you are eventually spending the same amount of time on both phases.

Spend anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute walking briskly and anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes walking casually to start out with.

Alternate these phases back and forth for a total of 20 minutes per interval training session, with no rest at all in between.

I would start out performing this routine 3 times per week and working up to 5 times per week, for a person who is very out of shape and has not worked out in a long time.

* As you get fitter, you can make your intervals harder and harder.

You can do this through a number of methods:

Start out by increasing the time you spend in your high intensity phase

The next step is decreasing the amount of time you spend in your low intensity phase

Keep doing the above steps until you have reached a ratio of 1:1 high intensity to low intensity time periods

Once you have got to this point, increase the difficulty of the exercises you are using and adjust the time periods once again so that you are spending less time on the high intensity phase and more time on the low intensity phase

Repeat the above steps ad nauseum to keep raising the level of difficulty.

* You want to keep the duration of your interval training fairly short - no more than 20 minutes, and as little as just a minute or two (micro workouts, anyone?).

Start out with longer durations when your interval training is less exhausting and gradually shorten the overall time spent doing intervals as your workouts get harder and harder.

Those are the key points you need to know about interval training.

For a more in-depth discussion of interval training, as well as illustrated examples, please visit my blog post at http://www.losefatatwork.com/2009/03/high-intensity-interval-training-hiit-what-it-is-and-how-to-do-it/

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) - What It Is And How To Do It By Yudi Kerbel http://www.losefatatwork.com