Interval training is cardiovascular training that is extremely effective for both cardiovascular strength and fat loss. It works your heart extremely hard, which gives it the ability to move more blood wtih each individual pump. This gives you better endurance for running, walking, having sex or performing any other cardiovascular activity.
It also improves your metabolism, making your body burn more calories both before and after you work out. So, someone who regularly interval trains will burn more calories watching TV at night than someone who does not.
Interval training is also quick (albeit brutal). Most interval training sessions are around twenty minutes long, so if you don’t have much time you can easily smash a session out after work, or even during your lunch hour. This makes interval training a good option for the busy exerciser.
You need to ease into interval training, both in terms of general training and for individual workouts. You should start every interval training session with a five-minute warmup, where you work at a gradual rate and keep your heart beat just slightly elevated over your resting heart rate.
Once you’re warmed up, you need to increase the speed or intensity for a “work” interval. The key is to be working as hard as you can. If you’re on an exercise machine, you can either start going as fast as you can or increase the level to a higher level.
Your intervals should be short — around 30 seconds, but this is not set in stone. You can make them 15 seconds if you want, or a minute long. They shouldn’t be much more than a minute, though, as the key to interval training is short duration, high intensity.
Once you’ve finished your first work interval, you should have a rest. Don’t stop exercising, of course. Rather, just slow down to the speed you were going when you were warming up. Your rest interval should be twice as long as your work interval when you start this training. Over time, you can make it shorter and increase the total number of work intervals.
The whole workout should be 20 minutes long. This doesn’t feel like much, but trust me — you’ll feel it.










