High Intensity Interval Training
High Intensity Interval Training will trigger release of human growth hormone, the most powerful natural fat-burner known to science.
You step outside for some fresh air. You spot your 8-year-old daughter down the street, kicking and screaming as a strange man attempts to drag her towards his car. You blitz towards them like a thoroughbred, running as fast, as hard, as furiously as possible.
Imagine this kind of run. How long could you sustain it? 30 seconds tops? 20 seconds, maybe? Could you talk at the end of it? When’s the last time you bolted like this during one of your treadmill workouts?
And let’s give this scenario a happy ending: The man sees you, lets your daughter go, takes off in his car, and you get the license plate. You report him and he’s nabbed by the police. And you make the front page of the paper: Mother sprints down attempted child abduction!
This kind of all-out running sprint accurately describes a “work interval” that would be part of high intensity interval training (HIIT Training), one of the most effective, fat-guzzling and fitness-gaining techniques. HIIT involves alternating very short-duration doses of power-based, all-out efforts, with one to several minutes of casual effort (the “recovery interval”), over a 15- to 30-minute session.
High intensity interval training is far superior to the most popular form of cardio training: “steady-state,” in which the person stays at a pretty-much fixed pace for up to an hour. That which you can sustain for long periods, will not slash nearly as much fat as that which you can sustain for only 30 seconds. Just 20 minutes of HIIT twice a week, is substantially more effective than 60 minutes of steady-state aerobics every day!
So why, then, don’t more people do HIIT?
The myth still persists that steady-state cardio induces more fat loss. The steady-state camp continues to hold fast to the fairy tale that long-duration, slower cardio is the solution to stubborn fat. Of course, a previously sedentary person who then commits to an hour of
steady-state every day will enjoy some improvement. This is the honeymoon period. But it’s very short-lived, and only a limited amount of fat will be lost in many cases, especially depending on diet.
Don’t we all know people who claim to stick to a diet and do hours and hours of cardio, yet they still carry that spare tire or those thunder thighs? The little diagrams on cardio equipment don’t help in eradicating the fairy tale. These diagrams clearly imply that you’ll lose more weight when exercising in the “fat-burning zone,” versus the “cardio training zone.”
The cardio training zone involves more intensity. And of course, HIIT involves maximum intensity. Thus, people stay confined to the fat-burning zone, cruisin’ along on the elliptical while watching the big game on TV.
Yet another reason why some men and women remain skeptical about HIIT is because they believe that in order for exercise to be effective, the body must be in continual motion.
For instance, they jog at a steady pace, give or take 1 or 2 mph in variation, nonstop for 30 minutes on a treadmill. A HIIT running workout for just 23 minutes may actually involve only about two and a half minutes TOTAL of actual running, and 20 and a half minutes of casual walking! How can two and a half minutes of running (the sum of eight work intervals!) be superior to 30 minutes of nonstop jogging?
More information on high intensity interval training can be found on the HIIT Training page.