Traditional Workout Alternatives

Interval Training is a new practice quickly gaining praise in the fitness community, with our busy world people are finding that they have less and less time to spend working on their bodies in turn, fitness experts have begun implementing faster, more intense workouts to help people stay in shape and in most cases their new training methods are producing terrific results.

These new alternative training styles focus on high intensity workouts for short periods of time with limited time for rest, one of the most well known forms of interval training is High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT, HIIT workout sessions normally last less than 20 minutes without taking into account warming up and cooling down as stated from intervaltraining.net. When perform a HIIT session it is important to focus on larger muscle groups such as legs or back to allow as many muscles as possible to work, thus expending more energy, and burning more calories. When you perform a HIIT session your goal is to perform periods of high intensity workouts in rapid secession, for example running or sprinting for 30 seconds followed then by jogging for 30 seconds followed again by sprinting for another 30 seconds this would continue for the duration of the workout of a 10 to 15 minute workout not including warm up or cool down. HIIT benefits the exerciser because it’s high intensity and heart rate elevation does more work and burns more calories in less time, the if you were to say jog on a treadmill at a set speed for extended periods of time.

Another popular form of interval training is called Tabata Training and intervaltraining.net claims it to be single most effective type of high intensity interval training and the most intense form of interval training. Tabata training is training to at High Intensity for short period of time followed by a quick rest for half that period of time, for example you would perform a relatively hard exercise such as push ups or squats for 20 seconds straight as fast as you can while maintain proper form and then rest for 10 seconds, you would then repeat the cycle until a time of 4 minutes is reached. Since the training is at a level of such high intensity the workouts are usually extremely short, but highly effective.

Interval training is constantly be refashioned and adapted in different ways, programs such as the P90X infomercial workout program use a variation interval training to produce their results, and fitness groups such as CrossFit and various body boot campus also uses different forms of interval training in their workouts. So if you’re looking for a fun new way to get in shape and do not want to spend a particularly long time doing it, try interval training but just remember to mix things up because no matter how intense a workout might be your body will adapt to it eventually.