Texas Lap Band Surgeons Talk With You

Recently my brilliant spouse (I’ve got to say that, he took our daughters out shopping for mother’s day) showed me an exercise plan to maximize results from a minimal amount of time.  Given how crazy hectic all of our lives are, I thought that sounded like a great idea.

The program goes by many different names for those of you who like Google: HIIT (high intensity interval training) or just intervals for example.  The idea is this: you warm up for 3-5 minutes at an easy or moderate pace, then you alternate10-30 seconds of intense exercise with 1-3 minutes of relaxed recovery level exercise, repeat 6-10 times, then finish with 3-5 minutes of slow cool down exercise.

The idea is to start training your cardiovascular system to tolerate progressively more intense exercise so that you can burn more calories and lose more fat.  HIIT programs have been shown to give you a longer “afterburn” meaning you burn calories even after you stop exercising for a longer period of time than you do with simple aerobic exercise where you work at the same pace the whole time.

A sample program on an elliptical machine would look like this:

3 minutes at level 1-2, at a pace that lets you easily carry on a conversation with a friend

then 20 (10-30 seconds) seconds at level 2-3 AS FAST AS YOU CAN GO (you should be panting, sweating, grunting at this point)

then 1-3 minutes back at level 1-2 and slooooowww so that your heart-rate eases down and after a minute or so you can talk again.

Repeat this sequence 6-9 more times

end with 3 minutes cool down at the original warm-up pace and level.

A HIIT workout usually lasts anywhere from 20-30 minutes depending on how many cycles of intense/recovery exercise you do.  But when you look at the calories burned afterwards, it’s as many as if not more than what you would have burned by doing a moderate level pace for 45-60 minutes!

For those of you without access to gym machines, you can do the same thing outside on your walking route; alternate 10-30 seconds of jogging (yes, jogging!) with 1-3 minutes of walking to recover.  You may only start with 10 seconds of jogging for a few cycles, but within a month or two, you’ll be jogging for 20 seconds at a time, then 30 seconds, then need less time in the recovery phase, etc, etc until you might actually be able to jog for 20-30 minutes!  And have you ever looked at runners?  They are some of the leanest athletes around!!

The other nice thing about HIIT programs is that it keeps you from getting too laid back during workouts.  I’ve been guilty many a time of just going through the motions during a workout, not sweating much, not burning many calories and then wondering later why I didn’t lose any weight.  Especially for the folks who walk for exercise, it’s easy to put in far too little effort and then see far too few results.  You CAN push yourself to exert for 10-30 seconds at a time and with adequate recovery time, do it again.  You’ll be nothing less than thrilled with the results.