Cardio Training... For fat loss and skyrocketing fitness.

While it is true that steady state physical activity, let's say running, does have it's benefits, if your aim is to improve athletic performance or decrease body fat, or if you want a killer workout but are rushed for time, then high intensity interval training is the way to go. Steady state running is great for your recovery days, if training for an endurance event, injury rehab, are a complete running novice, or as a rest from hard interval sessions... You cant train flat out everyday! Unless you want to get injured or sick!!

What is interval training? Interval training is best described as periods of hard work followed by periods of rest/recovery, this is repeated a number of times throughout the training session. This repeated stress causes high levels of fatigue in the body which, if allowed the appropriate rest, recovery and nutrition, forces the body to adapt to meet these repeated stresses. 2-3 intense sessions per week is best.





HIIT or high intensity interval training is great for a number of reasons:

1. Boosts metabolism to enable your body to heal itself after exercise and to provide energy for your building muscles which ultimately helps to blast away fat. ... even while you're resting! Your body is using your fat stores to provide energy to repair and build muscle.
2. Great for fitting in a quick but thorough workout. You can do a great session in 15 minutes!
3. Increases your speed and efficiency at higher speeds, as your heart, lungs, circulatory and respiratory systems and muscles are overloaded by the faster speeds compared to steady state running.
4. Increases your VO2 max and lactate threshold, which are vitally important if your aim is to run/swim/ride faster. Basically this means you can go faster for longer.
5. It's great for your heart, helping to increase it's stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per beat), decrease resting heart rate (beats per minute), which increases it's cardiac output. In summary this means the heart can pump more blood around the body with less effort. Just like number 4, you will be able to go faster for longer and with less effort.
6. As a by-product of number 5, it can help to reduce cholesterol in the blood and artery walls.
7. Time goes much faster when performing intervals as you're completely focussed on the repetition you're currently completing. 20 minutes of intervals are over before you know it.
8.  It can provide a great physical and mental challenge.
9. You are only limited by your imagination as to the session you decide to perform. If you want to work on your sprinting speed, do short reps (less than 20secs), with long recoveries (up to 5mins). If fat blasting and aerobic fitness is your goal perform medium reps (30secs-2 minutes) with shorter recoveries (30secs to 1 minute). If your training for an endurance event than the previous session is great but you may want to do longer reps (5-10mins) with very short rests (1-2mins). You never have to repeat the same session!

A great example for an elite runner would be 10 x 1km (in 2:45) with 1 minute jog recovery. This means the athlete performs 10 repetitions of 1km hard efforts with a pre-determined target time (say 2mins 45secs). Each repetition is followed by a recovery of 1 minute of slow jogging. Now, although the athlete is performing 10km of hard work plus approximately another 2km during the recoveries (total of 12km), the training effect this athlete will get is much greater than if they were to simply go for a 12km jog. An elite endurance runner will only do this type of session twice per week.

Note however that all training sessions should begin and end with a thorough warm-up and cool-down.

----For mere mortals some great sessions would be:

- Jog 5 mins warm-up.
- Stretch all the main muscle groups.
- 10 x 30seconds hard, 1 minute walk recovery between repetitions.
- Jog/walk 5 mins cool-down and stretch again.

- Jog 5 mins warm-up, stretch.
- 10 x 15 secs flat out, 90 secs slow jog recovery between repetitions.
- Jog/walk 5 mins cool-down and stretching.

- Jog 5mins warm-up, stretch.
- 2-3 x 10mins at threshold pace, 3mins recovery between sets.
- Finish off with 3 x 100m sprints.
- Jog 5 mins cool-down and stretching.
* Threshold pace is a pace that you could maintain for approximately 60 minutes. If you are getting lactic acid in the muscles you are going too fast. If you can talk to your training partners then you're going too slow!

As with all types of training gradual progression is the key. Don't start training like an Olympian if you haven't gradually built up to it or you will undoubtedly get injured and sick. If you are new to exercise you could complete the above sessions but rather than focussing on the speed of your repetitions, it would be best to jog the repetitions and walk the recoveries.