Keys to an Effective Fitness Program (Part 1 of 5): HIIT

Often, when people contact me about training, it's because they are not seeing results from what they've been doing on their own. I know that's very frustrating—to actually be putting in the time and effort to workout & not notice a difference in how you look & feel.

There are 5 key components to making sure your fitness program is effective. I'm going to discuss them in 5 separate posts over the next 5 days.

The first key component is: HIGH-INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING

Steady-state cardio (walking, running, cycling at the same pace for the whole time) is certainly better than sitting on the couch and watching tv, but if we're ranking exercises by return-on-investment, it goes at the bottom. It's necessary if you're training for a long distance event, and some people (myself included) enjoy a long run. If you fall into either of those categories, then by all means, run like Forrest Gump :) 

But, if your goal is fat loss you'll want to do something that works harder for you. And, if you are short on time, as most of us are, you'll want to do the most efficient workout possible. The answer to both of those scenarios is high-intensity interval training.

The higher the intensity of what you're doing, the more it will benefit you—not only will it increase your cardiovascular endurance and fire up your metabolism, but it will keep your metabolism raised for hours after you've stopped working out. 

Since you won't be able to sustain a high-intensity for an extended period of time, you'll vary the intensities to give yourself time to lower your heart rate, catch your breath and feel ready to push yourself back up. For example: run 1 minute at a fast pace, then slow down to a slow jog for 2 minutes, then speed up again... You can do this with running, cycling, plyometrics, and even strength training.

Good news! These workouts won't be as long as the steady-state cardio you were doing. You can get a great cardiovascular, calorie-scorching, metabolism-raising workout in under half an hour. You just have to push yourself to those high intensities. If you haven't done this before, don't push it too hard—take time to build up your intensities. 

Give it a try and start feeling fit in a whole new way!

Check back tomorrow for the 2nd key component to achieving a better level of fitness :)