Have you ever been to a gym and watched all those people strolling along on a treadmill, reading a magazine and chatting away without missing a beat, and wondered 'Is that all it takes to get fit?'
Well-rounded exercise really is the key if you want to be truly fit - and more importantly, healthy. Combining your low intensity (endurance) exercise with some higher intensity (interval) training will help you get much better results. In fact one study from the Journal of Applied Physiology showed that people could actually increase their endurance by utilising higher intensity workouts. Another study published in the same journal showed that interval training leads to 36% better fat burning and 13% better cardiovascular (heart) fitness. In fact, adding some higher intensity interval training to your workout helps you to burn more fat, even when you return to lower intensity exercise.
So what is interval training?
Put simply, it means short bursts of high intensity exercise, from 30 seconds to a few minutes. It needs to be high enough intensity to get you out of breath. This is then followed by a short rest period or what is called partial recovery. In other words, it should not be long enough for you to fully return to resting heart rate. A good guide is about half of the length of time you are exercising for, then repeat several times.
Working out using a combination of low intensity, longer workouts and higher intensity, shorter workouts will ensure that your body is more adaptable and therefore healthier, not to mention fitter and more toned.
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