subject: What Is Interval Training And How Do I Do It? [print this page] What Is Interval Training And How Do I Do It?
Today we are going to go over something called interval training. There are many exercises and ways to do interval training and one I prefer is wind sprints just because of the intensity factor. You get a lot of bang for your buck and it can even cross over into a leg workout. Now the name wind sprints doesn't really mean anything special. In it's most basic form it's running. Running like you were chased by a bear and then, there's no bear, so you rest and then you're like, "Oh no! He's still there!" So you run again. It's over and over again kind of deal. And there's different, varying degrees of rest to time working and it can be one minute on, one off, or 30 on, 2 off, depending on what you're after. Whether you're trying to burn a lot of calories, or whether you're trying to increase speed, and so on, and so forth.Actually, losing weight is probably the easiest objective. Now when I say intervals, or wind sprints, or sprinting, one set of stairs for somebody that's out of shape is a sprint. That is an interval, in regards to intensity-wise, that's a huge spike on their day. Anything works. A lot of people will start off just doing consistent intensity for a period of time and build up that time to get the volume. Then once they can handle that intensity level then they might chop it up and do spikes of intensity. They only have two choices there. They either have to make it more intense or they have to allot more time if they want to go any further. So if you have 30 minutes to work out, if that's all you have, then you have to start going harder. The then next step up from walking would be jogging, but you can't just automatically jog 30 minutes, so then you might jog one minute on, one minute off.That is the essence of interval training.You could pick anything, any measurement to get that going. And then after that it could be jog, sprint, jog, sprint. And, if you can sprint for 20 minutes, then you're not sprinting. Because then you're jogging. If somebody's 400 pounds and they walk for 10 minutes they'll probably blow away the amount of calories that I burn jogging for 20 because of the mass they are moving. That's why on the TV weight loss shows you see them jacking up the inclines and just walking, walking, walking. A lot of people initially can't weight train for the same amount of time because it's so intense to go as long as they can doing low intensity cardio. So, they can go for a 30 minute walks but if you got them lifting weights for 30 minutes they'd feel like their arms were going to fall off. So in reality, how complex is interval training? It's not! Go hard and then rest and then go again and you're heading down the right road.
