Lose Belly Fat Fast

Posts Tagged ‘interval training’

Who wouldn’t want to get a great work out in under 15 minutes? I am sure we all would love to be able to get a nice work out in such a short time. And that is exactly what interval training allows one to do! (you may want to read my previous post on Interval Training.) Interval training is of course more of a methodology and less of a work out program, as such you can use just about any type of exercise for it.

Although you can use just about any exercise for this purpose, body weight exercise are probably best – you can do them fast with relatively low chances of injury. Where as say trying to do Olympic lifts at fast pace would compromise technique and increase the chance of an injury. But let’s get a bit more specific and actually list a few quick and simple exercise you can use for amazing work outs:

1) Probably the easiest of them all but amazingly effective tabata squats – do as many squats as you can for 20 seconds, then rest 10 seconds, 8 intervals. (by the way, Tabata was the name of the scientist who did a lot of research on interval training if I recall correctly) The goal is to get the highest total number of squats. What makes this exercise so awesome, aside from its effectiveness is that it doesn’t require any equipment and can be done anywhere, at home or in a hotel room.

2) Running is a great exercise, but if you want to get a great work out without spending a lot of times you can use sprints to do just that. Go to a track field (would look kind of weird if you did this on the street) run a 100 meter as fast as you can, take a short break (up to a minute or so) then run another 100 meters. Do it 5 times and you’ll burn so many calories it’s unreal. not only that but the entire thing will only take you about 6-7 minutes!

3) Getting a bit bored? Why not combine a few different exercise – you can do squats and push ups where you do an interval of squats for 20 seconds, 10 seconds break, push ups for 20 seconds, break etc. for 8 rounds total, so 4 rounds of push ups and 4 rounds of squats. Same as in example 1, the goal is to do the highest number of push ups and squats. Now not only do you have a fun and effective work out but you are working on different muscle groups as well!

Those are just a few examples of how you can combine simple exercise with interval training to get a quick and effective work out. Better yet, no matter how fit you are, interval training will always be effective – it’s just a fit person will have higher numbers. Which makes it one of the very few work out programs that can work well for both unfit people and pro athletes.

You should do a warm up before interval training though (as well as a cool down) and I would also recommend that you get your stamina to a certain level before trying interval training as it does push your heart rate etc up. If you can run for 30 minutes at a moderate you should be good. But do go slow(er) the first time.

Interval training – it’s been a buzz word for a while now it seems. And there is a good reason for it, whether you want to burn fat, gain muscle or improve your stamina interval training works great. What makes it so good? We’ll get there, but first a quick over view of what interval training is: as the name suggests it’s a work out routine where you do exercise in intervals, usually very short (from 20 seconds to about 3 minutes depending on work out) followed by a quick break, then exercise, then break.

There are several reasons why this method is very effective. Firstly it allows you to go at or near maximum effort – something that isn’t possible with a flat work out with no breaks, the rest periods in between allow you to keep going at that maximum level for longer amounts of time. Why is doing exercise at maximum effort matters? Well, just think about two athletes running a 100 meters. One is a sprinter that runs it at a sub 10 seconds, the other is a long distance marathoner who runs it at high but sustainable pace of 6 meters per second. The sprinter can only run 100meters at that speed, marathoner can run for hours. Which one do you think will burn more calories and have a more effective work out? Of course the sprinter. (read: Running to Lose Weight)

Interval training allows you to do exercise at maximum effort which produces much better results than exercising at 70% or some such level of your maximum in the same period of time. Time is the second part that makes interval training so great. At some point you reach a level where your fitness is so good that doing exercise in aerobic regime (sustainable level) hardly produces any results unless you do it for hours. But doing them at maximum level with short breaks in between allows you to get a great work out in a short period of time.

While interval training becomes a necessity for high level athletes (except marathoners) it is a good program for an average Joe or Jane as well. The fact that you can get an amazing work out in just 5-10 minutes is very appealing to many people. Not only that but you can use body weight exercise, combined with interval training you can get an awesome work out in less time than it would take you to get to a gym!