HIIT- Quick, Easy and Convinient

By Jennifer Steele

We all want to be fit, healthy and look good. However, one of most common reasons people give for not being healthy is lack of time. They say they don’t’ have time to exercise, don’t have time to prep and cook healthy meals and don’t have the time to take a few minutes of time for themselves each day and destress. This well may be the case but what most people don’t know is that they don’t need to spend hours in the gym or the kitchen. There are many solutions out there for including healthy habits into a busy schedule and one of them is High Intensity Interval Training.

High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT is a training technique with two parts. The first is a short period of 100% all-out effort followed by a rest period that is either low intensity active recovery or complete rest. This type of training gets your heart rate up and keeps it up, there is an increase in the bodies oxygen demands. The body can’t keep up with this demand and so by the end of the workout there is an oxygen deficit and so the body asks for more oxygen during recovery post workout. This after burn effect is known as Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen consumption (EPOC) and it is the primary reason why you burn more calories and fat after high intense training session then with steady state long sessions.

Other benefits of HIIT sessions:

• Increased metabolic rate
  • Due to the increase in oxygen demand and the EPOC that follows High Intense Interval Sessions there is an increase in metabolism and fat burning for up to 48 hours after exercise. This means that even after you leave the gym you are still burning fat!!
• Quick and convenient
  • HIIT sessions can be done in 30 minutes or less and so there is no more excuses about not having enough time.
• No equipment necessary
  • These sessions are not only quick and convenient, but they can be done anywhere as they need no equipment, in a bedroom, lounge, hotel room or even garden there really is no reason for not breaking a quick sweat.

Here is a basic example of a HIIT sessions:

• 3- 4 Rounds of:
• 1 minute = Squats
• 1 minute = Jumping Jacks
• 1 minute = Push Ups
• 1 minute = Mountain Climbers
• 1 minute = Sit ups
• 1 minute = Burpees
• 1 minute = Step ups
• 2 minutes = Rest

27- 36 Minutes in total, no equipment needed.

So next time you pressed for time and need to squeeze in your recommended 30 minutes of exercise, why not give a HIIT session a go!

For more information contact us.