Why does hiit work so well

You give a series of exercises your full effort for short bursts of 30 to 60 seconds, and follow it with an even shorter period of rest. While exercising with this type of maximum effort is difficult, it does wonders for your health. While you're doing a HIIT workout, you're burning about the same amount of calories as you would during a typical workout like running. However, you burn more calories after a HIIT workout than you do during a steady-state cardio exercise like running, where your heart rate remains relatively stable.

A study confirmed this by having a group of athletes do a HIIT workout and a steady-state run at two different times. Nine minutes after the exercises stopped, researchers found that the HIIT group was burning an average of 3 kilocalories per minute, compared with 2.

This phenomenon of burning calories after you stop exercising is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption EPOC. EPOC occurs when your body burns more calories healing the wear and tear from an intense workout. It's common with HIIT workouts because the exercise is so intense, and it has been linked to effective muscle growth. Since HIIT burns more calories because of EPOC, it can be a more convenient way to help you lose weight , since you don't have to spend as much time working out.

The review found that people who did HIIT workouts lost Most HIIT workouts involve many different movements. Father and husband, on a mission to help people move more, eat better and make a positive change to their lives. No worries! What is HIIT and what makes it so effective? Your message. Tabata is a style of HIIT that calls for 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated times total. Start with one of these unbelievably quick workouts to start seeing the benefits of HIIT.

Not only do you burn more calories during a high-intensity interval training workout than steady-state cardio, but the effect of all that intense exertion kicks your body's repair cycle into hyperdrive.

That means you burn more fat and calories in the 24 hours after a HIIT workout than you do after, say, a steady-pace run. So if you're looking to get out of a morning jog with your roommate, just tell them all about this benefit of HIIT.

Here's all the science on exactly how to build muscle and burn fat. Most people aren't used to pushing into the anaerobic threshold when your body needs to recruit energy stores already available without the assistance of oxygen. But HIIT training asks you to enter this anaerobic zone often as there is limited time for rest.

The short bursts or sprints of work require your muscles to burn glucose energy anaerobically as there isn't enough time for oxygen to help produce additional ATP adenosine triphosphate , which is your body's main energy source. And high-intensity interval training helps your heart and body improve its anaerobic threshold or the highest exercise intensity that you can sustain for a prolonged period without running out of ATP.

One study found that after eight weeks of doing HIIT workouts, people could ride their bikes twice as long while at the same pace as they could before they started doing HIIT workouts. Running, biking, jump roping, and rowing all work great for HIIT, but you don't need any equipment to get it done. HIIT places a significant amount of metabolic stress on muscle tissue. As part of the repair process, the body will produce elevated levels of human growth hormone, testosterone and insulin-like growth factor-1 to repair damaged muscle proteins, which lead to increases in muscle volume and definition.

Many health clubs and workout studios are applying this science to develop group fitness programs that feature HIIT workouts in formats that are 30 minutes or less. These formats enable you to do more work and receive numerous health benefits in less time.

A typical HIIT session would call for a warm-up of minutes where the intensity gradually increases to an intensity where talking comfortably becomes challenging. Once you are breathing hard and feeling your first sweat, it is time to go to work! There are a variety of work-recovery models for HIIT; the goal of a workout is to work as hard as possible for each work interval and use the recovery periods to try to catch your breath and get ready for the challenge of the next bout of high intensity work.

Ergometers work by applying more resistance the harder you work, so as you move fast for an interval there is greater resistance, withOUT having to adjust the equipment. Another option is self-powered treadmills — where your feet provide the energy for the treadmill belt to move. Traditional treadmills and stairclimbers are great for working out but not well suited for HIIT intervals because they require specific settings to change intensity.