Train less for more!

Eh? I hear you ask, what is this nonsense?

How can you get more change in your body from doing less training?

Imagine fitting your usual hour of training into half an hour, you might need to adjust the weights a little or your pace on the treadmill or bike but yes you can achieve amazing results training for less time but at a higher intensity. This is hard at first and challenging if you haven’t trained this way before.

The After Burn Effect basically means that your metabolism remains elevated for longer, that you continue to use calories at a higher rate for longer after a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) type training session than you from a standard endurance or strength session.

High Intensity Interval Training

Basically you work hard for short periods of time with shorter rest intervals or active rest in some cases. It can be a shock to the system, a thorough warm up is essential and a good active cool down to flush the lactate out of your muscles too!  

Perseverance and determination will get you through and once you see the results that can be achieved you will be convinced that this is the way to train!

HIIT has been around for awhile in various different guises and is now a major player in the fitness industry as a way to train.

There are many fitness, lifestyle and health related reasons for including HIIT in your training regime. Listed below are just some of the benefits of HIIT

• Time efficient - approximately half an hour or so training
• Strength and cardiovascular gains
• Boosts metabolism
• Increases insulin sensitivity
• Reduces age related arterial stiffness
• Reduces risk of metabolic disease such as diabetes and arteriosclerosis
• Burns more calories during and after training
• After Burn

An increased metabolism for longer after training

HIIT has so many peripheral benefits too; it’s not about how heavy a weight you can lift but how much work you can achieve with a moderate weight. The emphasis is on whole body training so there is no pressure to stick to training certain body parts on set days etc. The variety of different workouts also means that you can adapt your training easily if you are travelling for work or pleasure and the local gym doesn’t have all your usual training equipment in it. You could even do bodyweight only workouts on the beach!

Challenge, Adaptation, Change, Progress

The variety of exercises available and the constant change in the workout structure keeps the body guessing as to what is coming next, this challenge will ensure that the adaptation to training process is always working thus limiting staleness, overtraining and driving progress.

Now this is all great if you know how to structure your workouts, choose what exercises to use and in what order to use them?

There are loads of great apps and groups available to help with this and one such is the Get Coached HIIT Works programme. This is a closed FaceBook group that gives you access to free programmes, coaching videos and the chance to get directly in touch with a coach (me) to ask any questions as well as reach out to the Pages training community for feedback, input and programme shares.

To find out more about the Get Coached HIIT Works programme please get in touch with me on tsilvester@getcoached.net or leave your email at www.getcoached.net/the-hiit-works to unleash your inner athlete and be a better you!

Thanks for reading and I hope this has inspired you to try a HIIT workout or two!

Spice up your cv workouts!

I recently asked a client of mine if they had any questions on their training and the discussion came round to cv workouts and how to make them less boring! And that is what my next blog should be on I thought, how to make cv workouts less boring. I'll need a better title though, just to spice it up a little!

Get more done in less time!

Cardiovascular work, endurance work, whatever you want to call it is traditionally thought of as steady state work, one pace. On the treadmill or cross trainer for half an hour or so at the same speed. Lots of cv equipment has interval or hill programmes included which are great and certainly help to make the training more varied and it's this type of variation that I want to talk more about.

Do your cv workouts feel like this?

There is more and more evidence showing that HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) or Tabata type training is not only good for international athletes but for the regular gym user as well. The health and fitness benefits are many and varied and we will be covering them later in this article.

L. Véronique Billat used interval training of varying interval lengths to train high level middle distance track athletes and has shown significant improvements in endurance and speed as well as specific physiological adaptations beyond just cardiovascular improvements. The links below are citations for two of her published works on this.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004210050029

http://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00007256-200131010-00002

Her studies also showed that this training also worked with untrained individuals as well.

Dr Izumi Tabata of Tabata training also looked at the training effects of short recovery interval training bouts, see the link below.

https://breakingmuscle.com/learn/the-tabata-revolution-explained-what-why-and-how-to-tabata

This study looked at the benefits of short maximum effort intervals with very short rest intervals. This became known as Tabata rounds, 20 seconds of work with 10 seconds rest for 8 efforts equalling a 4 minute round.

Tabata and Billat’s work were originally geared towards running but have both been used with body weight and weighted exercises to great effect.

This type of training has been shown to reduce body fat, increase muscle mass, increase strength and endurance, help to reduce the risks of heart disease and diabetes, high blood pressure and can increase elasticity in major arteries which can stiffen with age.

So how do I use this to make my cv workouts less boring I hear you ask?

Below is listed several workouts that should ease your boredom a little.

The first three are based on Billat’s timings and should be completed at 85% to 95% effort with active recovery at approximately  40% to 50% effort.

The last three session times are based on Tabata’s work where each bout is near maximal effort whilst recovery is minimal effort.

Work Time	Active Recovery	Effort Repetitions	No. of rounds
2 minutes	1 minute		5 to 10 rounds
4 minutes	2 minutes		3 to 5 rounds
5 minutes	3 minutes		2 to 5 rounds
20 seconds	10 seconds	8 efforts	3 to 5 rounds
40 seconds	20 seconds	4 efforts	3 to 5 rounds
30 seconds	30 seconds	4 efforts	3 to 5 rounds

These are only some of the many variations available and should be enough for most of you to be getting on with for a while.

Best advice is to continue to include some steady state recovery training in your programme approximately once every 10 to 14 days.

To find out more about HIIT Training and how it can help you please get in touch here on by email at 

tsilvester@getcoached.net 

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the workouts.