Ok sweet things, hands up if you’re just dying to spend hours at the gym in order to get a quality workout. Not me. Don’t get me wrong – I love a good, sweaty, take my breath away workout but I also like having a life and spending time with my family.
Unless you’re training for a marathon, or you really, really love it, you have no business spending hours on the treadmill. You can get just as sweaty in a fraction of the time and with a host of other benefits.
So we’ve all heard the buzz around High Intensity Interval Training, better known as HIIT. HIIT is the ultimate way to make you feel like you’ve had the mother of all workouts in mere minutes. The combination of aerobic activity and alternated periods of high and low-intensity training can be applied to virtually any piece of equipment, or no equipment at all. You can HIIT your bike, rower, floor, stairs and yes I have even HIIT it in the shower.
Most HIIT workouts take anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes—giving you much more time to do all the other things you actually want to be doing the rest of the day.
BENEFITS OF HIIT
- Increased athletic performance
- Helps to prevent or overcome plateaus
- Allows for greater VO2 (oxygen) intake
- Reduce the risk of overtraining
- Great for the old ticker
Sounds all too good to be true right? There has to be a catch. Well there is – to get the results you want you need to work really hard. That means sprinting not jogging, leaping not hopping and sweating like crazy. If you think you can walk away from a HIIT training session with a perfect face and your fabulous hair in place – you’re not doing it right.
The pay off is that you burn more calories in less time, and rev up your metabolism for the entire day— meaning you’re not only burning fat during your workout, you’re burning more fat for up to 48 hours afterwards. That’s good news for anyone wanting to lose weight so now there are no excuses.
You can do interval training with or without equipment—the only thing you’ll really need is some sort of timer, and yes there’s an app for that.
Here are a few sample interval workouts you can try on your own:
- 50 seconds of work:10 seconds of rest alternating between burpees, air squats and push ups (x 12 rounds).
- 30:10 intervals of jumping rope, walking lunges, squat jumps, push ups, mountain climbers and sit ups (x 18 rounds).
- 20:10 of burpees, pull ups, star jumps and Russian twists (x 10 rounds).
If you’re feeling adventurous why not try my favourite paddle pop workout?
The Paddlepop Workout
Are you to HIIT up your next workout? Remember to leave me comments below. I would love to see how you go with the workout.
Valeria
Xx
