Why You Need to Incorporate High Intensity Interval Training in Your Routine

HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training is one of the most effective work out regimes for building muscle, burning fat, and increasing your heart rate.  It’s been recent buzz in the fitness world as of late, the buzz word being: HIIT workouts.

So what is it exactly, and why is it so important?

HIIT alternates between bursts of quick energy, high intensity exercises instead of steady, fixed cardio. After all, repetitive cardio can get boring and your body can get used to the same exercises day in and day out - we all need something new and exciting to keep our body and mind interested!

Weight loss plateaus are extremely common in your journey to a fit lifestyle. This is mainly because muscle burns fat and lean muscle mass uses five times the calories compared to fat mass.  When you begin a new exercise routine, the brand new program will take time for your body to adapt; this is when your body responds best because it requires you to work extra hard and make changes to adjust to a different work load. As soon as this adaptation phase ends, you are left burning less calories and the level of intensity does not feel near as intense as it was originally.

This is where HIIT comes into effect, if your goal is to burn fat then you need to encourage your body to work as hard as possible, and that is only done by incorporating HIIT activities into your workout routine.

Catalyst Personal Trainer, Kevin Yeboah, believes strongly in the effects of high intensity interval training.

“I would choose a HIIT workout mainly because it offers variety,” Yeboah said. “It gets your heart rate up, and it burns more calories as it shocks your muscles, and depending how intense, it can even shock your nervous system.”

Yeboah stresses the importance of HIIT, especially during compound exercises, or exercises that work more than one muscle group at a time. Exercises such as squats with an overhead press are great compound exercise, which can be completed in interval training. Even better, incorporating high intensity workouts can result in a faster overall workout, rather than working for a full 60 minutes. With an HIIT regime you can burn fat fast and speed up your metabolism in half the time.

For all you skeptics, unsure that these claims of HIIT is the most effective weight loss and fat burning workout, we have some evidence to back up our claims. A study showed that when researchers compared the result of fat oxidation from a high intensity interval-training program to one with continuous cardio activity, well the results were impressive. While both burned the same amount of calories, researchers found that sustained moderate intensity workouts to be much more effective for fat burning, “A continuous exercise training protocol that can elicit high rates of fat oxidation increases the contribution of fat to substrate oxidation during exercise and can significantly increase insulin sensitivity compared with a eucaloric interval protocol."

HIIT is more effective and efficient at burning fat fast and keeping up a healthy heart.

Sam Turchan

sam@catalyst-health.ca

**Study Reference: Venables, M. C.; Jeukendrup, A. E. (2008). "Endurance training and obesity: Effect on substrate metabolism and insulin sensitivity". Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise 40 (3): 495–502.