Friday, July 24, 2009

Breaking down HIIT

A lot of people have asked me what I'm doing to lose the weight so quickly. Aside from making a few dietary changes (another blog, another time), the majority of my weight loss is coming from sheer activity.

I alternate 5 days a week: 3 days I do HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) and 2 days I do weight training.

HIIT is probably the simplest (yet hardest) workout I've ever tried. I used to bust my ass on the treadmill AND the bike AND the track AND in the pool and didn't lose a fraction of the weight I've lost doing HIIT. It's NOT fun. It's NOT easy, but at the same time, it's the easiest to stick with because you don't have huge, lengthy workouts to contend with. Twenty to twenty-five minutes and you're done.

HIIT leads you up gradually week by week to a heartier workout. The first week, you spend 5 minutes warming up. For me, this means walking at a steady pace (2.0) on the treadmill. Once the five minutes is up, I jog at a 5.0 pace for 30 seconds. Then take 90 seconds at a 2.5 rate. I hit it again with jogging at 5.0 for 30 seconds. Repeat that so that you've jogged SIX times and rested. Then do a five minute cool-down and you're done.

Yes. It's that simple.

The second week, you still jog your 30 second intervals, but instead of taking 90 seconds between them, you only take 60. The third week, you're running for 30 seconds, resting for 30 seconds. Fourth week, you increase the number of jogs you do from 6 to 8.

The links I used to come up with this workout are listed to the right of this blog.

I did add weight training to my HIIT about two weeks into it because I knew I needed to firm up the muscles that are left underneath this flab. Besides...muscle burns fat MUCH more quickly than fat burns fat. While I follow the regimine that my personal coach at the YMCA told me to do, I don't feel comfortable enough telling you which machines to use, how many reps or at what weight to use them. That's something you're best deciding between you and a trainer. I do know that it helps tremendously to combine the HIIT & weights in a weekly workout.

Now, one thing I mentioned briefly was dietary changes. If you'll look at the www.losebellyfatworkout.com link, you'll notice that they talk about other nutrition goals and weight loss motivation you can use to maximize the benefit from the training. Obviously if you're able to do this, that's going to provide the best results. You'll also notice that they talk about pushing yourself as hard as you can push yourself. I'm *not* necessarily following that part of it either. If I followed it to the letter, it would have me jogging the entire 20 minutes (30 second hard core run, then "resting" would be a light jog) and I know my body and I know I can't do that. So instead of telling myself "There's no way...Nope. Sorry. NEXT?!" to the workout, I figured out a way that I COULD do it. It's obviously working, so I'm just working on getting myself up to the constant jog that the workout suggests. How quickly I do it is entirely up to me. Some days I push myself at a little quicker pace both walking/jogging. Sometimes I'll just walk faster..some days I'll push the last part of my jogs to a little quicker pace. It just depends on how I feel.

The main thing to remember is ANY movement is better than NONE and you can ALWAYS customize it to suit your body and what you're capable of doing. You can also do this workout on a stationary bike rather than a treadmill if you're unable to run. Just do a steady pace on the bike for the resting periods and then quicken your pace (try doubling it, if possible) for the "hard core" stuff.

Hopefully this explanation helps a little when you start looking at doing this for the first time.

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