High Intensity Interval Training - It's Not For the Half Hearted

High intensity interval training (hiit) can get you excellent fat loss and fitness results with a much shorter time commitment than steady state cardio.

It is possible to cut your commitment to cardio workouts in half with high intensity interval training both in terms of days you do and time spent on your cardio workout.

Hiit is a bit like calorie shifting is for your diet. Both strategies keep your body guessing about what to expect next.

If you have the same size meals and do the same steady state exercise at a "usual" time of the day, your well meaning but deluded body readily adapts to your pattern and aims to hang onto your fat reserves just in case you need them.

This can be one reason for a fat loss or fitness plateau.

You can shake off the plateau and remove the boredom from your weight loss or fitness program by varying your calorie intake over the week and by throwing in a high intensity interval training workout as part of your regular program.

The calorie shifting diet is just a matter of organised planning. The hiit training needs at least a reasonable level of fitness and a good understanding of how far you can and should push yourself.

Whether you choose to walk, jog, cycle, run or ride a gym machine like a stationary bike, stepper or treadmill, the gains from hitt will not happen without some pains.

The idea is to take a short warm up followed by repeated short bursts alternating between your usual pace, flat out and recovery speed, then a warm down phase.

You might like to use your environment to help you with the high intensity phase. Steps and hills are good. In the gym, you might like to crank up the resistance of the machinery as well as or instead of increasing your speed.

High intensity interval training does get great results, but you have to put your whole heart into it. And what are you going to do with all that extra time on your hands?

Find out more about high intensity interval training and read Rosie Peters' review of the top calorie shifting diet on the net.