More than body weight or even body fat percentage, overall cardiovascular health (measured by your resting heart rate) is an outstanding indicator of wellness and a peek into what’s happening with your body’s most important muscle. Science has shown that the best way to increase your heart health is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT is a short duration workout where you go at an all-out effort for a short period, rest, then repeat 7-10 times.
Just like your skeletal muscles strengthen by applying a load, resting, and then repeating, your heart muscle stenghtens similarly. The beauty of HIIT is that these workouts take only a fraction of the time of a conventional workout, plus there’s a limitless variety of movements that you can use! HIIT works for swimming, cycling, elliptical, running, push-ups, boxing, and more.
[Audio Transcription]
Welcome to LivingFuelTV. This is KC Craichy.
Recently, I had a friend who was training for a triathlon. He was spending endless hours in the pool, or running, on the bike; this is a lot of time away from your family, particularly if you travel a lot, and you come back to this triathlon training. It is massive getting up early in the morning and training, training in the evenings. It is really incredible to see the effort these people put out. I challenged this friend, however to instead of spending an hour in the pool, or even longer, I challenged him to try something different. And this was, the Olympic-sized pool. I had challenged him to swim as fast as he possibly could, from one end to the other, and then rest until he got his breath back, about 90% recovery, and then do it again, and to do that 10 different times. Ten times only. Now, he did this, he really kind of didn’t think it was going to work, but he did this and could barely walk after the tenth time.
The point of this is, the research is clear. High-intensity, interval training is better than long-term cardio, in building cardiovascular health, cardiovascular fitness, VO2 max, and so on, the holy grail, if you will, of athletics.
So try this. If you’re training for a marathon, or if you’re training for a bike race, or anything along these lines, or if you just want to try to get more fit, in a shorter period of time, then try this technique. If you like swimming in the pool, that one works very well. The trick is, once you do your sprint, whether that be in the pool, or on your bike, or running, or boxing on the heavyweight bag; your goal is to get 20-30 seconds of maximum output, followed by rest, until you have recovered. That means, if you’re doing wind sprints, you don’t start the next sprint when you’re halfway out of air. The trick is not being out of breath. It’s being out of breath, how many times you can be out of breath.
So the point is, push it to the max, relax, rest, push it to the max, relax, rest, and try this seven times. Seven times seems to be the magic number, in terms of the literature, and it was basically, a five-mile run is not as effective as seven burst-exertion on a high-intensity, interval training method. So I challenge you to try this. Whatever it is that you’re doing as a sport, that you will warm up appropriately, and then max out for 20 seconds. One of my favorites is the heavyweight bag, flurries. So you’ll basically count 100 punches into the heavyweight bag, as hard and fast as you can do it, and then rest, even if you have to lay down, and get back up and do it again, and do seven, and if you can get to 10 reps, or 10 rounds, that’s absolutely fantastic.
The next thing is my 7-year old, Joshua watches me do that, and I lay down between the latter rounds, and he asks me, ‘Why does the bag always win?’ The truth is, the bag doesn’t win. If you can do these things, you are the winner.
I hope this was helpful to you. God bless you, and have a great day.
