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Slick Technique Scorches Body Fat & Blasts hGH

It’s very common to get locked into thinking about workouts and cardio as static, compartmentalized workouts, instead of fluid activities that can occasionally take different shape for the greater good. Nothing could conform to that more than sprint training for conditioning. Low vs. Slow Workout veterans of the 1980s, 1990s – and to large degree, the early part of the 2000s – were swindled into thinking that cardio needed to be low intensity and slow duration to burn fat and have any appreciable affect on the physique. How wrong that was... Sure, it works, but not as well as other methods – namely, High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) style cardio. TEST: Which one burns more fat?

One person does an hour of cardio in a fixed pace – which is aerobic, and moderately fat-burning. The second person does 30 minutes of cardio – with 10 sets of 30 second sprints, followed by two minute walks. ANSWER: The second person. But why? Science Supports HIIT Both of these methods burns fat, but why does the second person, with short-duration springs and recovery, burn more fat than a slow, steady pace? The reasons can be found in body biochemistry: The second person recruits hormonal activity that the first does not... Those hormonal changes during exercise set the stage for a kind of fat-burning that continues for hours after the training session is finished... It’s called metabolic after-burn, and it can last for between 12 and 24 hours after a workout. Science supports this, too… Low, slow cardio engages the body in a workout that recruits 60 to 70 percent of one’s max heart rate... That is definitely within a superior fat-burning zone and it works to effectively burn body fat for energy...

No one has ever disputed that fact. However, HIIT cardio works a bit differently, because it involves intervals of high-intensity exercise – at a rate of about 90 percent max heart rate – followed by intervals two-to-four times longer spent in active recovery at a much lower intensity (engaged walking or slow pedaling) Current research shows that intense cardio bursts, alternated with low, slow cardio, have a profound effect on fat-burning over steady state aerobic activity for two reasons: Hormonal changes and metabolic burns that endure far past what steady state cardio can offer. A recent Australian study found that women who followed a 20 minute HIIT program consisting of an easy eight-second sprint followed by just 12 seconds of rest, lost six times more body fat than another group following a regimen of 40 minutes of cardio done at a constant rate of 60 percent max heart rate. Studies support that HIIT allows the body to break down fat The Gift the Keeps on Giving An earlier study at Florida State University – Talahassee, found subjects burned an average of 10 percent more calories in the 24 hours following a HIIT session, than a steady state group, despite that the calories burned in the session itself were identical...

That owes to an elevated metabolic rate and means a lot more benefit for time invested. Simple Math: Let’s say your hour of low, slow cardio, done four times per week, typically burns 500 calories per session... That’s a total of 2,000 calories burned per week to benefit your fat loss goals... Now let’s say, instead of that, you choose to do four 20 to 30 minute HIIT cardio sessions per week... Because studies confirm that you burn, on average, 10 percent more per workout – at a 50 percent time saving – you end up burning a total of 2,200 calories for the week, IN HALF THE TIME! Any complaints there? Right.

Other HIIT Benefits: • Regulate blood sugar • Maintain cardiovascular condition (heart health) • Tones muscles (anaerobic aspect) • Builds endurance, strength and stamina Increased metabolic rate not only means the window of fat-burning is opened wider for ongoing calorie burning, it also means it will enable more calories to be consumed... That means you can eat more (always good for the metabolism) and change body composition with less of a caloric deficit... In other words, it gives you somewhere to go, instead of increasing aerobic training times and decreasing calories to reach a goal. All That and a Bag of Muscle Ever wonder why you can’t seem to hold onto muscle, or progress past a certain point? You chock it up to a trade-off: Muscle comes at the cost of low body fat. And that it does – unless you’re talking about HIIT cardio. Few people know this, but HIIT is actually far more anaerobic than it is aerobic – though both are aspects of this kind of training... It essentially forces muscles to use stored fat as fuel – which not only burns your body fat, but also fuels muscles to work at an intense pace...

This is what you do when you engage in resistance training and it’s why when you see a sprinter’s body – muscular and round, not long and lean – it’s evidence that sprinting works similarly. But here’s the biggest reason your physique can look even better doing HIIT cardio, than skipping it or doing steady state aerobics: In HIIT, where high-intensity work is employed, the muscles must contract at a much more rapid rate... That means they tire more easily as a result of lactic acid buildup. But during all of this intense, quick-burst work, that’s when Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is released... That means that instead of breaking down muscles (as is the case during steady state cardio) muscles are fortified with a supply of hormonal activity that encourages retention of muscle – and sometimes even hypertrophy – than atrophy (muscle loss). HIIT is very hard work. In fact, it can be abominable if you’re working at a very intense level... You rarely see people doing it in the gym on cardio equipment because most aren’t willing to work that hard... But the rewards, greater fat burning in less time, sustained metabolic rate, and boosted hormonal activity, only equate to a better body composition overall... While steady state aerobic workouts do burn fat, it’s compartmentalizing what should be a total body process toward improved body composition.