What Are Interval Training Advantages

At this point, you may have heard someone discussing interval training.  What is interval training?  How do you do interval training? Can you do  interval training?  What are  Interval Training Advantages?  

What is Interval Training?  Interval training is a type of cardio that will burn more calories than old fashion cardiovascular exercises, like elliptical at a steady rate for 30 minutes.  The idea behind Interval Training is to do a cardiovascular workout and vary the intensity, time and recovery period.  Your body to burn more calories and increase your heart's efficiency which will improve your athletic ability.    For example, if you vary your treadmill or elliptical by going at slow pace for 90 seconds and then go as hard as you can for 30 seconds.  Check out the videos.

What are the interval training advantages?

BURN MORE CALORIES.  We want to burn calories so we can lose weight and this is the best way to burn the most calories in a given time period of exercise.

Increase fast twitch muscle activation.  Your body will learn to utilize fast twitch muscle fibers more efficiently.  Fast twitch fibers are the fibers that are utilized during bursts of activity like sprinting.  This will increase your overall athletic ability.


Increase in Anaerobic Capacity.   Interval training will increase the regeneration of energy during the recovery phase.  For example going very hard at the exercise for 1 minute then going very slow for 2 minutes and repeating.  Your body will utilize the 2 minute recovery phase to build back your energy stores more efficiently.

Increase in Aerobic Capacity.  Increase your VO2max and hence the efficiency of your heart’s ability to pump blood to the body.  An example of Interval Training that can help with this is to exercise hard for 1-2 minutes and then back off at a much slower pace for 3 minutes.  Repeat for a 30 minute session.

Erase The Boredom of Cardio.   By varying your workouts you can take the boredom out of the workout and get a better training effect overall.

You Don’t Need Machines.  That’s right.  You don’t need machines at all to do interval training.  You can go outside and vary the speed at which you do your exercise.  For example, walk for 60 seconds and then sprint for 20-30 seconds and repeat.  It is all in having a good fast action paced part to the exercise and then a recovery phase that is about twice as long.

As you can see interval training advantages are vast and we only touched upon five of them.  Start your interval training session today and burn more calories, lose more weight and erase the boredom with conventional cardio.  You can check out another video on interval training and your diet here.