Fast Effective Workouts

The time-saving benefits of interval training

You might have already heard or read about the efficiency of interval training compared to long, steady state cardio sessions when you are training for fat loss or cardio-vascular health.

 

When pushing yourself in short bursts, you can reach higher intensities than if you were to keep the same intensity for a longer period of time as in steady state cardio training.  It is the “pay off” of working at these high intensitites that is so important that, in comparison, you would need to spend significantly more time if you wanted to get the same results through low to moderate intensity exercise. 

 

The efficiency of interval training is largely dependent on

 

• the degree of workout intensity in each interval

and on

• the total amount of time spent at this intensity 

 

These are the two variables that you can play with depending on your condition and on what your goal is.

 

Respect the progressions

In order to be able to exercise safely at high intensity, you must prepare your body by gradually increasing the intensities and the time spent at these intensitites.  

By high intensity we usually mean working at somewhere between 80-95% of your maximum heart rate.  When doing interval training at these intensity levels, often refered to as high intensity interval training ( or HIIT), you can get great results with fairly short workouts.

Working at high intensity is time efficient but it is not without risk. You should work your way up in intensity, starting out with alternating intervals of lower and moderate intensities if you are not used to training.

If you are an athlete preparing for a specific sport and you need to train at a certain intensity to make it sport specific you should progress first by adding a number of repetitions and second by increasing the length of the interval - all within the frames interval intensity and duration relevant to your specific sport.