HIIT IT!

HIIT.  High Intensity Interval Training. 

It's a form of training that involves  involves alternating between periods of low or moderate intensity and periods of high intensity, and it takes a fraction of the time of a normal cardio workout.

Yesterday morning I was short on time, needing to be at a friend's church early in order to practice along with her and another friend.  Our trio was singing yesterday morning at their worship service, and we needed sound checks as well as a run-through and warmup for our voices.  I wanted to get the most possible out of my window of time to burn some fat while enjoying the beautiful Sunday morning air and the serene stillness. 

HIIT sprints, I decided, was the way to go.

The advantages of going with HIIT are many.  For one thing, it takes less time -- I had a 25-minute window.

• Increases your V02 max much more than steady-state cardio. This means it increases the amount of oxygen your body can take in during exercise.
• Doesn’t cause you to lose precious muscle mass like traditional steady-state cardio does. When you engage in long, slow cardio sessions, your body is more likely to become catabolic where it starts to eat its own muscle for energy.  This doesn't happen during HIIT.
• And if a person is trying to GAIN muscle, you would simply combine the HIIT workouts with a slight increase in calories above maintenance level, and they become a more anabolic type workout, which INCREASES lean muscle mass.  More muscle, less fat, equals higher metabolism and ... SEXIER body composition.



(Yes.  I know.  Legs need to be leaner!  A work in progress.)

There are many variations of doing a HIIT workout, but I decided to go with the 30 second/90-120 second split:  Maximum intensity for 30 seconds, and I chose to keep my recovery to 90 seconds.  I warmed up for 5 minutes at a brisk walk, then launched into eight sprint intervals at a 30/90 split, cooling down with a brisk walk for about 3 minutes.

It's an extremely quick and efficient way to get in some very decent fat-burning cardio to start my day, and it wakes up both my brain AND my body in record time.  It's as if it flips my inner power button -- charged for the day.  There are just some days when I need a swifter kickstart to my day.  HIIT intervals always do the trick.

Ready, set....

HIIT IT!