HIIT, Does It Work?

We all know that it’s important to stay active and doing so allows for you to lead a longer and healthier life. To see significant health benefit, the CDC recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of exercise each week, which equals about 30 minutes a day for five days out of the week. For many, this proves as difficult if your job involves a lot of sitting and a fitness routine can be difficult to manage when you tend to have a busy schedule. High-Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT, is a workout style that is much easier to work into a busy schedule. It involves short bursts of intense exercises that typically lasts 30 minutes, and if worked into you schedule 5 days a week, it would be CDC approved. According to Grant Tinsley PhD, there are seven reasons why you should give HIIT training a chance.

1. Burns Calories – You can burn the same number of calories in less time. The National Institute of Health published a study that compared the effectiveness of a workout while using a treadmill, cycling machine, or HIIT workout techniques. They found that while using HIIT workout techniques, the same number of calories are burned in the 1/3 of the time. This seems like a no brainer, especially when you feel that you don’t have time to workout in the first place.
2. Increased metabolism – your metabolism remains heightened for several hours after a HIIT workout, resulting in continued calorie burn. The Nation Institute of Health published evidence that even after two minutes HIIT sprint workouts, the body experiences increased metabolism for 24 hours. This is equivalent to a 30 minutes run.
3. Fat Loss – a common misconception is that HIIT only helps you gain muscle and doesn’t necessarily help you lose fat. This is not the case. Doing HIIT only three times per week for 20 minutes can result in significant weightless and 17% reduction in visceral fat, or the disease-promoting fat.
4. Muscle gain – although muscle gain is not the intent of HIIT, you may find that you become very toned, which is nothing to complain about.
5. Improved Oxygen consumption – HIIT will improve your muscles’ ability to efficiently use oxygen twice as fast, when compared to any other form of workout.
6. Reduce heart rate and blood pressure – It’s been found that just 60 minutes of HIIT each week is more likely to help reduce your heart rate and blood pressure than any other form of exercise.
7. Reduce blood sugar – HIIT not only reduces blood sugar, but it also improves insulin resistance more so than any other form of exercise.

The bottom line is, if you’re short on time and looking for a way to get active, HIIT is the way to go.

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