Posts Tagged ‘hiit’
Monday, August 1st, 2011
How to Effectively Combine HIIT Sessions with Endurance Cardio
Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please: walking or jogging for hours on the treadmill, peddling for hours on the stationary bike, climbing a mountain on the StairMaster, and plodding away on the elliptical trainer is NOT the best way to burn calories!
We’ve seen a hundred studies telling us that high intensity interval training (HIIT) burns more calories and fat, speeds up your metabolism, and is less catabolic than hours of endurance cardio. HIIT can also be far less boring, will actually help you build more muscle tissue, and increases your resting metabolic rate.
HIIT: Twenty minutes of HIIT cardio improves your VO2 max, burns a ton of calories, increases your metabolism, and maintains or builds muscle tissue all at once.
vs.
Endurance Cardio: Sixty minutes of endurance cardio is not only boring as hell, it also increases cortisol, burns muscle tissue (protein) for energy, and halts protein synthesis.
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: cardio, cardiovascular, endurance, exercise, fat loss, hiit, lifting, lose fat, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Conditioning, Fitness Tips, HIIT Routines | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, June 28th, 2011
Should Bodybuilders Do Cardio After Weight Training?
Spend some time in a corporate gym and you will see hundreds of bodybuilders lifting moderately heavy weight for sets of 10-15 reps, then you’ll see them hop on a StairMaster or elliptical machine for about 20-30 minutes of moderate intensity endurance cardio. There are many reasons for this behavior, the most common being that weight training is just a hell of a lot more fun than cardio.
Apparently the weights-first-cardio-second protocol is considered the most effective way for bodybuilders to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. But is it?
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: bodybuilding, cardio, cardiovascular, Diet, endurance, exercise, fat loss, hiit, lifting, lose fat, myth, myths, training, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout
Posted in Bodybuilding Myths | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011
Excerpt from Muscle Explosion: 28 Days to Maximum Mass
The Most Efficient Cardio You Can Perform
By: Nick Nilsson
Interval Training is simply THE most efficient type of cardio you can perform. You can get pretty much ALL the benefits of longer-duration cardio but without the long duration. Moreover, you don’t get the boredom, you don’t spend all your time doing it, and you don’t have nearly the risk of overuse injuries.
In a Nutshell:
Low-intensity exercise is defined as working at a heart rate of about 60 percent to 65 percent of your maximum heart rate (equal to 220 minus your age; thus, if you are 20 years old, 220 minus 20 is 200 maximum heart rate).
High-intensity exercise is defined as working at about 75 percent to 85 percent or more of your maximum heart rate. Using the example of 200 as your maximum heart rate, working at 60 percent of it would be 120 beats per minute. Eighty percent would be 160 beats per minute.
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: cardio, cardiovascular, Conditioning, hiit, interval training, intervals
Posted in Conditioning, HIIT Routines, Product Reviews | 5 Comments »
Friday, July 9th, 2010
Wall Balls is a silly name for an exercise, I know, but that’s what you get when you borrow exercises from Crossfit. In fact, Wall Balls are a great conditioning exercise that builds full body stamina and endurance. It will also make you sweat.
This is an exercise that integrates perfectly into a high intensity interval training (HIRT) circuit, and can also be used to build high intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions, but do not translate that well into Tabata training.
Wall Balls also can be used separately as a full body conditioning exercise by attempting to complete X reps as fast as possible, or by attempting to complete as many reps as possible in a set time limit. Either way, it burns!
Medicine Ball Training
Medicine ball training has been around for a long time, and in fact they were used frequently at gyms back in the 18th and 19th centuries. Ancient (3000+ years ago) wrestlers and other athletes used to train with various sand-filled implements, which evolved over time into the medicine ball.
The standard medicine ball is a weighted rubber ball measuring roughly 14 inches in diameter, although sizes vary greatly nowadays as you can get a medicine ball from the size of your fist to the size of your body.
Used in a wide variety of fitness programs, medicine balls can be benched, rowed, curled, pressed, squatted, tossed, caught, bounced, squished, and generally manhandled all for the sake of fitness.
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: cardio, cardiovascular, Conditioning, Crossfit, full body, hiit, hirt, wall balls
Posted in Conditioning, Crossfit, Exercise Technique | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
How to Sprint Faster
Sprinting is the foundation of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and will make your legs big, strong, fast, and powerful. Sprints are great for developing endurance, but also for developing lean muscle mass and speed strength.
Ever seen a skinny sprinter? I didn’t think so.
Sure, squats are the almighty kings of the Gym Exercise Kingdom; but sprints are like the kings of the Functional Exercise Kingdom whose jacked-up, super-lean army of massive wheels is constantly trying to overthrow the squat as the #1 top leg exercise.
You think you can sprint, but can you?
Here are 21 tips you can follow to improve your sprinting:
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: Conditioning, hiit, run, running, Sports, sprint, sprinting
Posted in Conditioning, Exercise Technique, Fitness Tips, Sports | 11 Comments »
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Now you can download the Full Body Plus HIIT for Fat Loss workout routines in Excel spreadsheet format. You can use these files to print out the routine and take it to the gym on a clipboard, keep track of your progress on the computer, or both.
The Full Body Plus HIIT Fat Loss Routine for Men can be found here:
Click this link to go to the download section of the post so you can download your spreadsheet!
The Full Body Plus HIIT Fat Loss Routine for Women can be found here:
Click this link to go to the download section of the post so you can download your spreadsheet!
I made some changes to the programs as well. Going through them I realized that there will almost always be time to complete those optional sets at the end of the routine, so I made the “e” exercises mandatory and added an additional abdominal exercise to make a super-set.
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: fat loss, hiit, lose fat, lose weight, spreadsheet, weight loss, Weight Training, Workout Routines
Posted in Workout Logs, Workout Routines | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
Originally posted: 1/27/10
Updates:
2/1/10 updated routine, added Excel spreadsheet workout logs)
3/8/10 added example HIIT routines for days 2, 4, and 6.
Many of you are asking for a full body workout routine to burn fat, so here you go.
I have even customized the program for both men and women.
You can skip the details and go straight to the routines if you wish:
The Program
We are integrating 3 full body training sessions with 3 HIIT routines and taking the 7th day off. Since the goal is fat loss, we are striving to add some muscle mass, maintain strength, and burn as many calories as possible.
This is accomplished by staying in a slightly higher rep range than we would normally use for strictly strength training, while using super-sets for most of our exercises. We add an optional set to the end of each workout in case you are able to finish the workout early.
Major compound exercises are rotated to prioritize a different muscle group on each of the 3 training sessions each week.
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: Conditioning, fat loss, full body, hiit, lose fat, lose weight, weight loss, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout routine, Workout Routines
Posted in Conditioning, HIIT Routines, Weight Training, Workout Routines | 231 Comments »
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Originally posted: 1/26/10
Updates:
2/1/10 updated routine, added Excel spreadsheet workout logs)
3/8/10 added example HIIT routines for days 2, 4, and 6.
Many of you are asking for a full body workout routine to burn fat, so here you go.
I have even customized the program for both men and women.
You can skip the details and go straight to the routines if you wish:
The Program
We are integrating 3 full body training sessions with 3 HIIT routines and taking the 7th day off. Since the goal is fat loss, we are striving to add some muscle mass, maintain strength, and burn as many calories as possible.
This is accomplished by staying in a slightly higher rep range than we would normally use for strictly strength training, while using super-sets for most of our exercises. We add an optional set to the end of each workout in case you are able to finish the workout early.
Major compound exercises are rotated to prioritize a different muscle group on each of the 3 training sessions each week.
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: Conditioning, fat loss, full body, hiit, lose fat, lose weight, weight loss, Weight Training, weightlifting, workout routine, Workout Routines
Posted in Conditioning, HIIT Routines, Weight Training, Workout Routines | 34 Comments »
Saturday, September 19th, 2009
This guest article was written by Adrienne Carlson, who regularly writes on the topic of pharmacy technician certification. Adrienne welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: adrienne.carlson83@yahoo.com
Change Up Your Interval Training Strategy
I enjoyed going for a jog early each morning, for about a month or so that is.
When it started to become boring and monotonous, I discovered interval training. So I varied my routine to sprint and then jog for 300 meters and 100 meters respectively.
It kept me going for a while, but then, I began to lag and find excuses not to go.
There’s no doubt that it’s one of the best ways to lose weight and improve fitness, but if you want to stay the course with interval training, you must find ways to make it more interesting.
And to that end, here’s what I did (and what you can do too) to make interval training more interesting and more effective:
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: hiit, interval training, intervals
Posted in Conditioning, Guest Post | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
What is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)?
High Intensity Interval Training, often represented by the acronym HIIT, is really a big deal. HIIT training is the ideal and most effective replacement for underachieving endurance cardio.
As a matter of fact, in studies HIIT is 9x more effective at burning fat than endurance cardio.
More often than not, I have talked about HIIT workouts made up only of interval sprints. Today I would like to discuss HIIT training with resistance machines, but not to be confused with High Intensity Resistance Training, or HIRT, which I will write about shortly.
HIIT training will give you the following benefits:
- Burn more calories than endurance cardio
- Burn more fat than endurance cardio
- Increase power
- Increase speed
- Increase muscle density
- Improve anaerobic endurance
- Improve aerobic endurance
- Speed up metabolism for more than a day and a half
- Shorten cardio training sessions by at least 33%
(more…)
Use Facebook to Comment on this Post
Tags: cardio, cardiovascular, Conditioning, hiit
Posted in Conditioning, HIIT Routines, Workout Routines | 51 Comments »