So, what is the physical activity that burns fat like crazy?
If you don’t know the answer to this question it’s essential that you read this. Are you one of those enthusiasts who spend hours and hours on the cardio equipment, count the minutes while feeling extremely bored and at the end don’t even see the desired results?
Well, you might have heard of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT, also as known as High Intensity Intermittent Training) cardio or have seen people in the gym doing a different type of cardio activity but you never realized what exactly they are doing.
HIIT is something that surprisingly not too many beginner athletes and sports enthusiasts know about. It surprises me because HIIT has proven to be more effective compared to regular cardio in just half the time it takes you to do regular, steady-state cardio session.
For example: 15 min of HIIT cardio is as effective, or even more effective than 30 min regular cardio, like jogging (scientific evidence at the end of the article).
HIIT as the name suggests is a form of cardio activity that includes fast intervals, called “sprints”, which are performed with 85-90% of your maximum effort, followed by slow or moderate intervals with 60% max effort. The maximum duration is 20 min. Isn’t that great? No more 45 min to 1 hour boring cardio facing the gym wall..
This type of cardio activity can be done on any cardio equipment as well as outdoors on the street and even running up the staircase (by the way, I love doing sprints outdoors).
An example of HIIT cardio on an inclined treadmill will be 30sec sprint followed by 1min brisk walking or 1 min sprint followed by 2 min moderate walking.
The benefits of performing High Intensity Interval Training cardio instead of regular slow or moderate intensity cyclical cardio are:
- More calories burned for the same period of time
- More fat burned throughout the day due to the faster metabolism caused by HIIT
- Increased VO2max
- Increased HGH release
- Increased Lactic Acid threshold
- Shorter in duration: 4 – 20 min
With all that said I think there is no question as to how regular cardio and HIIT cardio compare and which one is better for increased fat loss as well as significantly improved cardio-vascular system capabilities.
And, if you want to see hardcore science, go visit these studies on the subject of High Intensity Training – 1, 2, 3, 4
What is your experience with HIIT? Do you do High Intensity Cardio Training or you’ve never tried it. If you have, what results have you achieved?