Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Is HIIT Primarily For Weight Loss Or Muscle Building?

By Russ Howe


Most gym users who want to know how to build muscle can't seem to get any further forward due to the amount of conflicting information out there. One such area of confusion is HIIT.

Many people who perform this type of exercise are going for weight loss, however there is also a major use here for those looking to improve size and strength.

While there are certainly multiple benefits to be had from a good cardiovascular exercise plan, most people don't find cardio as interesting as weight training. This is particularly true with men, who seem far more interested in resistance workouts than hitting the treadmill or elliptical trainer.

Many individuals wrongly presume that cardio exercise is purely for weight loss, or they believe the age old misconception that treadmills are for women and weights are for guys.

However, if your primary goal is hypertrophy you are the exact type of person who should be performing regular cardiovascular workouts and one of the best forms of this is high intensity interval training. Not only is it great for fat loss, it'll also help you to build more lean tissue.

There is a massive difference between the steady pace of regular cardio, often billed as boring, compared to that of a high intensity session. Despite being performed on the same equipment, it's a completely different style of workout.

High intensity interval training is based around constantly switching between moderate and high intensities, causing your body to tap into both it's aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. There are striking similarities between an interval training session and a resistance workout.

The two primary energy sources we use during exercise are called aerobic and anaerobic. During regular cardio workouts we use our aerobic system. However, during both resistance training and high intensity intervals we use the anaerobic system instead.

Due to the fact that our body uses the same energy system during interval training as we do for resistance workouts, we actually burn calories in the same way. You may have already heard that a resistance workout causes your body to continue burning calories at an increased rate for hours after you leave the gym. This also happens with interval training, whereas regular cardio doesn't have these 'afterburn' benefits.

Despite growing in popularity over the last few years, HIIT remains a largely unused form of cardiovascular exercise. Most gym users believe that they need to punish themselves with long, dull sessions on bikes and treadmills to lose fat and it is simply not true. If you are learning how to build muscle more effectively, this form of training will work very nicely alongside your resistance training.




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