If you want to exercise your way into a more fit, toned body by burning off body fat, interval training is the top fat burning workout program recommended by professional trainers of today.
Workout sciences have been increasing exercise physiology knowledge at a rapid pace over the last couple of decades. No longer do trainers recommend that you do cardiovascular workouts at an even pace for hours on end. Regardless of whether you enjoy this type of pace on a treadmill, rowing machine, or stationary bike, you’ll get a far better fat burning workout with interval training.
If you’re among those who get bored doing the same cardiovascular exercise over and over for hours each day, this should be great news. While exercising at a steady pace daily will provide you with plenty of benefits, it can’t match the fat burning, mental improvement, and fitness improvements that have been shown in studies done with interval training. Best of all, it’s far easier to stick to an interval training program because it provides regular breaks and exercise variety.
Don’t let the term interval training confuse you, as it is actually as simple as it sounds. Interval training is simply when you work out your body at a high rate for short periods of time, with short periods of light exercise between. So you can do interval training whether you’re lifting heavy weights to exhaustion with walks between sets or going up and down hills on a bicycle.
Of course, the most popular of all cardiovascular machines today is the treadmill. It has also become the most popular interval training machine in recent years, because old and young alike can do indoor interval training on a treadmill. But you can do the same interval training by going for a walk and run session outside or by running up and down hills.
The warm-up remains one of the most important parts of any heavy exercise program, which includes interval training. The main thing is to get all of your muscles in motion for about ten minutes. Once you’ve finished your warm-up you can move straight into your exercise routine with the high intensity portion first. You’ll want to stay at high intensity for about thirty seconds to a minute, then come down to a lower intensity until you’ve gathered your breath for another burst.
It should be noted, as with the treadmill, that intensity doesn’t necessarily mean speed. While it is true that increasing your pace will increase intensity, you can also increase intensity by increasing the incline on the treadmill. The idea is to push yourself up to about 80% to 90% of your intensity limit, by any combination of incline and speed, before resting for your next burst.
If you haven’t been exercising regularly for a long time, you should consult with your physician to get clearance for high intensity exercise before beginning. Interval training can be a shock to your body at first. You may be able to mitigate this shock by giving yourself shorter bursts and longer, light exercise periods for your first few times doing interval training.
The good news is that studies are showing you can work out for a third of the time you normally would have to workout and still get more fat burning and cardiovascular benefits with interval training. So if you’re short on time, you can give your heart and lungs a serious workout in as little as twenty minutes per day, and get more benefits than with a steady sixty minutes per day routine. This is a large part of why interval training is the top fat burning workout program today.
Just make sure you stay focused and aware of your physical condition because when you’re going at near-full intensity, you may not maintain full awareness of your surroundings and how you’re feeling.
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