Sensible Fitness: How to Cut Fat and Time at the Gym
Our fitness expert may have just the thing to help you fit workouts into your busy schedule, and your behind into those skinny jeans. 

Question:
I have heard that interval training for a short time burns as much fat as longer cardio training sessions. Is that true?
- Jess

Answer:
There are many fads that go through the fitness world and it becomes hard for people to sort through the hype to see what is real. One of the current surges is interval training, and it has many positive results that support it. While it is certainly fast because you only exercise for short bouts, it is nowhere close to easy.

Interval training involves short, intermittent exercises performed at a very high intensity, repeated with rest breaks or low-intensity exercise periods in between. An interval training workout generally lasts only 15 to 20 minutes, but because of its high intensity you are totally wiped out at the end. "My legs feel like jelly," is a common quote from participants.

When you exercise, your body changes or makes adaptations to this stimulus, and the adaptations from interval training are much like those associated with traditional aerobic activity. This means that this type of training can be used for burning fat. Even though the duration of exercise is rather short, you are still burning calories during your "rest breaks" of low intensity exercise.

 Typically, interval training is done with running or biking, with periods of greatly increased speed followed by recovery periods of a more casual pace. This type of workout will burn calories but do little for total body muscle tone. Many of the clients at Sensible Fitness have goals of toning up and losing weight, so we have an established interval training protocol that incorporates weight training for toning intermixed with cardio for fat burning, which offers the best of both worlds. It has worked great because the rush of daily life does not offer much extra time for prolonged exercise.

In my opinion, you should not eliminate traditional aerobic exercise entirely because it is unlikely that interval training gives you all the benefits that longer bouts of exercise offer. But it would be a great addition to a stale or monotonous program. The biggest challenge might be mustering up the discipline to make yourself perform this challenging format without a trainer there to thrash you with his whip!

Doug Gibson
		About the author:
		Doug Gibson is a columnist for Cincy Chic and President of Sensible Fitness Personal Training Center in Blue Ash, Ohio, which specializes in women’s fitness programs. E-mail him at doug@sensiblefitness.com.
	Read More >>

Last update: 01-09-2008 11:49

Published in : Magazine Items, Health