Over the years, High Intensity Training has been the ultimate choice for most elite athletes.
Commonly known as HIIT training among professionals, this type of workout has become the go to for more and more people as compared to continuous aerobic training in the past. The big question, therefore, is why? Here are some reasons why.
1. Calorie-Burning.
High Intensity Training not only burns more calories during training but also after training as compared to other exercise methods such as continuous aerobic training. This is because the sudden bursts of intensity experienced during training tend to increase the kilojoule expenditure. That way, you burn more kilojoules in total and become leaner. Another amazing fact with HIIT is that you continue burning kilojoules for two hours while in recovery after a HIIT session.
2. Health Benefits
According to a recent study by the University of Leicester in the UK, short bursts of intensive exercise have been found to help with the prevention, delay and management of Type 2 diabetes.
3. Shorter Time Frames
High intensity exercise normally means exercise for short time periods. A typical HIIT training session involves an intense work out for 20 to 30 seconds for eight to 12 minutes. This usually involves resting periods to allow your heart rate to come down before going again. Such exercises could include 30 seconds of cycling, 30 seconds of push-ups or even 30-second sprints.
HIIT programs such as the Tabata programme involve 20 seconds of intense work-out followed by 10 seconds of recovery. Therefore, by doing eight rounds, you will have put in about four minutes of exercise time in total. This is therefore very convenient for all calibers of people, extremely busy schedule or not!
Therefore, it is clear why high intensity work-outs are preferred since you can throw a work out in just before leaving for work in the morning or with your kids over the weekend.
4. HIIT Is An All-Inclusive Workout.
High intensity exercises include workouts such as jumping squats, burpees, push-ups and high knees. All these go on to improve both your aerobic and anaerobic systems. Therefore, unlike other workouts which specialise on one issue at a time, HHIT training is an all-round, all-inclusive quick workout.
In conclusion, the low down on HIIT exercises is simply “less total time required to make a big change.” Being such high energy workouts, it is also important to be tracking your progress and your vitals. Therefore, you can opt for a timer app or stopwatch, an app with such features for example the Tabata Trainer and/or a smart watch that can give you real-time results for all your vitals and your progress.
