High Intensity Interval Training: Home Version

By Tony Gillis


Welcome to High Intensity Interval Exercises, one of the best ways for quick weight loss.

High intensity interval training, also called anaerobic exercises, flies under the radar in the general fitness community as most people tend to focus on building their strength, flexibility, and stamina. Anaerobic style training is usually found in high performance sports, such as professional ice hockey or tennis. It is also one of the best types of workout for anyone looking to reach their peak fitness potential.

Anaerobic VS Aerobic

This is a quick review of the difference between aerobic and anaerobic training. Firstly, aerobic work allows us to use the oxygen we breath in to meet our energy demands during exercise. It is simple cardio work where we can go on for upwards to one hour and not feel extremely tired. Aerobic exercises only work us to approximate 60 to 70% of our maximum heart rate. This sort of aerobic running, swimming or cycling is part of improving our overall stamina and is known by most in the fitness community.

Anaerobic exercises are the next step up from cardio training. The name "anaerobic" refers to "without oxygen", so you can guess what sort of training this will become. We work our body at such an intense rate that we operate at 80-95% of our max heart rate. We can only maintain this level of work for approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Any longer than our body will automatically slow down to an aerobic pace.

The benefit of working at such high intensity is that it does two things: rapid weight loss and increase muscle toning. A lot of fitness trainers are using this interval training system a lot more now due to its effectiveness.

For those who would like to try it out, but are not sure how, I've devised an anaerobic routine for those who would like to do this training at home. I'm guaranteeing you will sweat more than you've ever sweat after this workout!

High Intensity Workout Routine for Home

1) Push Ups for 45 seconds (to increase difficulty, elevate your feet up on a higher surface)

2) Knee Tuck Jumps for 45 seconds (land gently on your feet)

3) Leg Split in Push Up Position for 45 seconds (In the push up position, have with legs together. Open your legs to about shoulder width and then close them back together)

4) High Knees for 45 seconds

5) Jumping Lunges for 45 seconds (begin in the lunge position, jumped up and alternate legs, and land with the other leg in front in lunge position)

In between each exercise, take a 5-10 second break. This will give you a short amount of time to recover. During rest, make sure you take deep, bellowing breaths in to regain energy and oxygen.

At the conclusion of the entire set of exercises, rest for 2 minutes. Repeat this routine 3-4 times for maximum fitness growth.

Make it a goal to perform this routine 2-3 times a week. Ensure that you get one day of rest in between workouts.

At the beginning, this routine can be very strenuous and you may feel depleted at the end of it. Several recovery days are usually required after the first few attempts at this workout. Our body is familiar with being oxygen rich, so when we do anaerobic exercise, we have difficulties handling the deficiency of oxygen. I would suggest taking it slow in the beginning few weeks. Given two weeks or so, your body will learn to operate at the high pace required in these exercises.

Let's put it this way, anaerobic exercises is not for everyone. It takes a special dedication and endurance to survive these grueling fitness routines. Famous workouts like "Insanity" is tough on the body, but in a short period of time, the results show drastically. Do you think you have what it takes to include high intensity interval training in your workouts?




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment