Exercise fads may come and go, but HIIT, or high-intensity interval training, remains one of the most effective exercise methods.
May 26, 2015
Exercise fads may come and go, but HIIT, or high-intensity interval training, remains one of the most effective exercise methods.
Mixing brief bursts of high-intensity exercise with less-intense recovery periods boosts both aerobic and anaerobic fitness or, to put it another way, HIIT increases your ability to work out hard for both short and long periods.
You can do HIIT with almost any type of cardiovascular exercise: running, cycling, swimming, inline skating, jump roping and so on.
Don't worry, you don't have to jump right into a super-intense workout; in fact, you really shouldn't.
Your body needs time to adapt to the demands you're about to put on it, so gradually ease into the workout with a five to 10-minute warm up. Then do a five to 10-minute cool down after the workout, to ease your body back to a state of rest.
Both warm up and cool down should be gentler versions of the workout you're about to do. So if you're going to be running, you would warm up by walking or jogging.
Elite athletes who use this training method have access to all sorts of technology to monitor their intensity levels. For most casual exercisers, it's easiest to monitor activity with ratings of perceived exertion, or RPE. RPE is simply your own perception of how hard you're working out on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is sitting at rest and 10 is maximal effort.
Getting started on a new HIIT workout regimen is exciting, just be sure to work within your own limits.
Do keep in mind though that if you keep doing the same workout over and over, it's going to start to feel easier; once you notice your ratings of perceived exertion declining, you can transition to a more challenging HIIT program.
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