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Lose fat with High Intensity Interval Training

This is the year to focus on your health and fitness. To lose fat with high intensity interval training or, HIIT in your workout program. It’s challenging, makes you sweat, and is challenging.

I love high intensity interval training. I’ve included this type of training to lose fat for years. My clients may not always love to do it but they love the results. Throwing in some HIIT helps them reach their health and fitness goals a bit quicker. It helps build more confident by sculpting the body to wear sleeveless shirts, summer dresses, shorts and of course, health overall.

To lose fat with high intensity interval training you must go all out for a short duration of time. Usually about 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off of max effort. Doing a lot to a few rounds of this with all out effort.

I want to stress a key point though about fat loss vs weight loss for those who don’t know – they are different things.  When you lose body fat the scale may not change but your body shape does. The scale may only drop 5 pounds but you’ve gone down 3 sizes and have more muscle definition and thus, less fat. The scale is not a very good way to gauge your success and it can make you feel frustrated if focused on it. Instead, focus more on seeing your body get more sculpted, how your balance improves, mental acuity, mood improvement, sleep quality gets better, and a myriad of the benefits to exercise.

What is ‘High Intensity Interval Training?’

Benefits of HIIT

1. Short and sweet! This type of training can be done anywhere from 10- 30 minutes but you should always warm up for at least 5 minutes before you start. You don’t have to spend hours on a piece of ‘cardio’ equipment in the gym, train smarter not longer for great benefits and fat loss.

2. Burns more calories in a shorter period of time than an hour on a treadmill.

3. Burns more fat after your workout than steady state cardio so you’ll reap the benefits long after you finish your workout. Now who doesn’t want that?!

4. Sculpt your body without losing muscle mass.

5. You can do it anywhere. You don’t have to be in a gym to do HIIT, you can do it in your backyard, hotel room, in front of the TV or, where ever you are it can be done even, your bathroom. 

Example High Intensity Interval Workout:

Exercise           Sets                    Reps                              Rest                       Tempo

Warm up walk        1                       5 minutes                      N/A                         Moderate

Sprint                      6-8                    20-30 secs                    1.5-2 min                Fast as hell

Sit up and press    6-8                    45 secs                                                            Moderate

Reverse lunges      6-8                    30 secs                                                            Fast

Sprint, sit up and press and reverse lunges are to be done back to back then rest for 1.5-2 minutes and start again. You’ll be done within 20-30 minutes and feel great afterwards not to mention like your body is the machine you envision in your head.

If you’ve never done sprints before start with a moderate run for 30 seconds until you build up endurance and strength and warm up for 10 minutes rather than 5.

Have fun and good luck!