With the warm weather, many boost their outdoor activity. Joggers and bikers at North Park spring up. Neighborhood walks become more common. Aerobic exercise carries worthwhile health benefits. These include cardiovascular disease resistance, reduced blood pressure, an improved cholesterol profile, less bodyfat, and a healthy outlet for stress. Despite these good changes, it has shortcomings as most go about it. Long, slow, and steady exercise can harm the body through overuse. For example, jogging places repetitive stress on the joints. It wears out the back, knees, and ankles. It also requires a large investment of your time and can feel boring.
Interval training represents a way to achieve better results in less time, but requires hard work. This method involves bursts of tough exercise followed by rest periods. The Tabata protocol achieves this goal. This involves 20 seconds working, followed by 10 seconds of complete rest. This pattern continues for 8 cycles or 4 minutes. Although brief, research has shown that if you use a high effort, the aerobic benefits can surpass the gains brought about by the longer methods. These workouts often last far beyond 20 minutes, compared with slightly more than a few minutes for these intervals.
You can do any activity that involves large muscle groups and allows a rhythm to develop. Running, stairclimbing, and even jumping serve as good choices for most people. Include an easy warm-up, such as walking, for about 3-5 minutes. Begin the first cycle. Pay attention to the intensity. Intensity explains why interval training works so well. Higher intensities mean more work per unit of time. This includes adding resistance or distance. If a 10 represents the highest possible effort on a 1-10 scale, try to achieve 7-8 on your first cycle. Figure out the speed for the first 20 second period. Measure the distance you cover to find this out easily. If you achieve this pace for all 20 second periods lasting the full 4 minutes, try a greater distance or resistance the next workout.
An example will help you to understand better. Imagine running up stairs in your home or at a local sports stadium. After walking for 3-5 minutes, you start the first 20 seconds. You find that you can get up and down the flight twice if you push yourself. You rest at the bottom of the stairs for 10 seconds. You repeat this cycle 8 times for a total of 4 minutes. If you find it becomes too difficult to achieve two lengths in later cycles, you finish doing your best. If you achieve this goal, the next workout you bump up the demands. You cover more distance, perhaps 2 ½ lengths, or put on a backpack with a 5 pound weight inside and attempt the same distance. You will find that for a given time period, there may be a limit to how far you can travel. This happens despite becoming in better cardiovascular shape. This represents the ideal scenario to increase resistance. In our case it means adding the backpack with weights. Perform this routine 2-3 times weekly. Keep in mind it makes greater demands than traditional cardio. This means allowing more time to recover.
With new research, past fitness advice has started to fade. Intervals achieve what experts in the past thought impossible: cardiovascular fitness in less time. Want to lose weight? Use resistance training. Remember, more food makes you bigger, not lifting weights. Adding some muscle boosts your metabolism. It acts like investing. A sound investment makes money while away from work. Muscle works the same way. Since it requires calories to maintain, adding muscle allows you to burn fat even while inactive.
Give interval training a try. If you want even better results, include resistance training. These two together form a complete fitness program. You may include walking if desired, but don't overdo it.
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