Quick, fast movements or High Intensity Training (H.I.T.) will increase your metabolism to accelerate your fat loss during and long after your workout.

Here’s a great question for you: “Who’s generally leaner and reaches lower body fat %, sprinters or distance runners?” If you are thinking distance runners…ehhhh, wrong answer! Yes, they are lean people, but not leaner than most sprinters, just skinnier. Sprinters may look bulkier, but their body composition is made up of much more muscle. More muscle results in their body becoming a ‘fat burning furnace!’

Research has proven that it is not what happens during exercise, but what happens after exercise that makes a difference. Training at a high intensity will increase your metabolism for hours after your workout.

High Intensity Training (H.I.T.) helps your heart work more efficiently and burns calories in record time. New research from the University of Guelph Ontario shows that interval training increases the amount of fat you burn during other workouts too. It’s like its effectiveness carries over to each additional workout! In the study, women cycled for four minutes at 90 percent of their max, rested two minutes, and repeated the pedal/rest interval nine more times. After doing these hour-long workouts (called HIT for high-intensity training) every other day for two weeks, the women used 36 percent more fat for energy during a low-intensity 60-minute ride than they did before the study. Intervals improve your ability to use fat for fuel. This does not mean you have to do 60-minute interval sessions on the stationary bike. It means that if you replace your typical cardio session with a HIT routine, you’ll amp up the fat burning effect of your lower-intensity workouts, too.

Research has also proven that if you only do long duration cardio, your body will ADAPT. Basically saying that your metabolism will adapt and therefore you will burn less calories doing the same amount of work as your did during previous workouts. Your body is simply able to devise a way to ‘survive’ the task, become more efficient, thereby burning less energy.

In conclusion, you should always look for ways to ‘trick’ your body and incorporate the short bursts of movement into your cardio component. You can still do your 30 minute cardio sessions, but you also need to change it up and do some H.I.T. sessions as well.

It is best to always change up your pattern of cardio so that your body cannot adapt! Keep it guessing and this way your metabolism will have no option but to work at a high speed!

Cheers to health,

Angie
ISSA – C.P.T., B.Ed.