What is HIIT and how does it work?
For years, people believed that you had to workout for hours within your physical comfort zone to achieve an increase in stamina. However, if you work out in shorter but more strenuous sessions, you will become fitter more quickly using HIIT. It consists of short but very intensive exercises, which for example can burn off most of your stomach fat after only eight weeks of training.
HIIT enables the body to shed excess fat in an amazingly short period of time
Targeted HIIT workout sessions can help to increase muscle building and make fat burning more effective. Nevertheless, this type of workout lasts less than half an hour. Furthermore, you only need to do two to three HIIT sessions per week. This way you will achieve convincing results, without any stamina training. Despite the comparatively short time needed, you can double the effectiveness of your fat burning process with HIIT.
The reason for this is that HIIT demonstrably improves the so-called basal metabolic rate. The blood level of the growth hormones, and that of other hormones which enable muscle building, is raised by doing HIIT. In addition to this, HIIT lowers the blood fat, insulin and blood sugar levels. So not only does it improve how you look and your level of fitness, it is also very good for your health in general. For this and other reasons, HIIT is equally suited both to beginners and to those experienced in working out. This kind of training can be carried out on a treadmill, a cross-trainer, with a jump rope, on a bicycle, or even in a swimming pool – according to your particular preference. Your pulse will certainly be given a large boost by the high intensity intervals.
The HIIT Training Plan - Simple and effective for beginners and those with experience
After a normal cardio training session, the metabolism swiftly slows down afterwards. When you use HIIT, the body actually continues to burn energy for many hours after the short but highly intensive training sessions. This is also called the "afterburn-effect". A HIIT workout is comprised of three phases. During the first highly intensive phase, you push yourself to your physical limit for around 30 to 60 seconds. At a very moderate pace, there follows a recovery phase which lasts about three times as long as the intensive phase. Then there is another intensive phase. This highly intensive interval training takes only 15 to 30 minutes, with two or three workouts a week, in order to achieve the required effect. Even the bodies of people who have not been working out, adapt themselves amazingly quickly to HIIT, which achieves a markedly longer after-burn effect. Thus increasing the fat burning process, due to the larger oxygen deficit.
We look forward to hearing about your own experiences with HIIT, just comment in the section below. If we got you interested and you would like to have a personal HIIT training plan, one of our Personal Trainers will be happy to help you.
