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If you’re interested in blasting body fat while holding onto your hard-
earned muscle, you can’t beat HIIT.
When you train at a slow and steady pace for a longer period of time,
you’re training your muscle fibers to be more aerobic and have greater
endurance. There’s some evidence that suggests that muscle fibers adapt
to becoming more aerobic by becoming smaller and weaker, because the
smaller a muscle fiber is, the less time it takes for nutrients to travel within
the muscle fiber. This speeds up the rate at which nutrients can be burned
for fuel.
Yet focusing on just how many calories, and how many calories you burn
from fat, during a workout is also a flawed approach. The real benefit of
cardio for fat loss is the amount of calories (and calories from fat) you
burn after the workout. This is due to the process known as EPOC (excess
post-exercise oxygen consumption), which refers to the boost in your
metabolism and calorie burning that comes after the workout is over. When
you workout, you burn calories to fuel your muscles during the workout. But
when the workout is over, your body keeps burning more calories than
normal, despite the fact that you’re doing nothing. This is due to the
processes involved in recovery from exercise. After exercise, your body
must repair damaged muscle fibers, restock muscle glycogen levels and
remove lactic acid from the muscles, among other things. All these
processes require calories, with a lot of those calories coming from fat. And
when it comes to EPOC, this is where HIIT really trumps steady-state
cardio done at a lower intensity.
Although HIIT seems to have gained popularity in the last few years, the
concept is actually quite old. The origin of HIIT can be traced back many
decades to a technique called Fartlek training that was used by track
coaches to better prepare runners. The term “Fartlek” is Swedish for
"speed" (fart) and "play" (lek), so it means speedplay, which is essentially
what HIIT is. Today, HIIT has crossed over to the fitness industry due to
beneficial results that have been established through anecdotal reports and
published research studies. In fact, studies comparing HIIT to continuous
steady-state cardio have shown that HIIT is far superior for fat loss, despite
the fact that it requires much less time.
One of the first studies to discover that HIIT was more effective for fat loss
was a 1994 study by researchers at Laval University (Ste-Foy, Quebec,
Canada). It reported that young men and women who followed a 15-week
HIIT program lost significantly more body fat than those following a 20-
week continuous, steady-state endurance program, despite the fact that the
steady-state program burned about 15,000 calories more than the HIIT
program.
Metabolic Boost
One of the major reasons that HIIT works so well to drop body fat as
compared to steady-state cardio appears to be due to the greater increase
in resting metabolism following HIIT. Baylor College of Medicine (Houston,
TX) researchers reported that subjects who followed a HIIT workout on a
stationary cycle burned significantly more calories during the 24 hours
following the workout than those who cycled at a moderate steady-state
intensity. The East Tennessee State University study mentioned above
also found that subjects following the HIIT program burned more calories
during the 24 hours after exercise than the steady-state cardio group. A
study presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the American College of
Sports Medicine by Florida State University (Tallahassee) researchers
reported that subjects who performed HIIT burned about 10% more
calories during the 24 hours following exercise than those who performed
continuous steady-state exercise, despite the fact that the total calories
burned during the workouts were the same.
Another way that HIIT appears to work has to do with getting fat to where it
will be burned away for good. One study published in the American Journal
of Physiology reported that six weeks of HIIT increased the amount of
special proteins in muscle cells that are responsible for carrying fat into the
mitochondria (where fat is burned away for fuel) by up to 50%. Having
more of these proteins in muscle means that more fat can be burned up for
fuel during workouts and when resting.
Another study from the UK reported that obese subjects following a low-
carb diet lost muscle, yet those performing HIIT along with the low-carb diet
were able to maintain muscle mass. This makes sense when you consider
that weight training is technically a form of HIIT – you have short periods of
high-intensity exercise interspersed with periods of rest.
One reason why HIIT may lead to greater gains in muscle mass may be
due to the anabolic hormone testosterone. New Zealand researchers had
competitive cyclists complete four weeks of HIIT training involving 30-
second sprints on a stationary cycle separated by 30 seconds of rest. One
group sprinted with high resistance on the pedals, making it harder to
pedal, while the other group used a lighter resistance, which was easier to
peddle. Both groups peddled as fast as they could during the 30-second
sprints. They found that the men peddling at the highest resistance
increased their testosterone levels by almost 100%, while the group
peddling at a lighter resistance only increased test levels by about 60%.
Another reason for both the health benefits of HIIT and its benefits on
muscle mass, not to mention fat loss, has to do with improved insulin
sensitivity. When you improve insulin sensitivity, not only does this help to
keep you lean and prevent diabetes, but it can also aid muscle growth.
Insulin is an anabolic hormone that acts on the muscle cells to increase
muscle protein synthesis, decrease muscle protein breakdown and drive
more glucose, amino acids, creatine and carnitine into muscle cells.
Now that I’ve sold you on HIIT cardio, it’s time to look at some actual HIIT
workout programming. That’s what Part 2 of this Complete Cardio series
will offer. In that installment, you’ll find my “beginner-to-advanced” HIIT
routine, which is great for anyone still getting used to the high-intensity
nature of HIIT training. In the meantime, keep hitting the weights hard!