HIIT (high intensity interval training) or Interval training is an awesome tool for fat loss. It involves a cycle consisting of a short period of high intensity and a rest period. There are many different ways for you to set your intervals and for our examples, our intervals consists of 1 minute high intensity and 2 minutes rest.

Interval training can and should be done for any cardiovascular exercise. Remember, you do not have to follow our system and you can create your own intervals. Also, you will not be able to do as much in the beginning and will need to work your way up.

Our sample interval training routine will consist of 30 minutes:

Warm up by doing the exercise very slow – 5 minutes
High intensity – 1 minute
Rest – 2 minutes
High intensity – 1 minute
Rest – 2 minutes
High intensity – 1 minute
Rest – 2 minutes
High intensity – 1 minute
Rest – 2 minutes
High intensity – 1 minute
Rest – 2 minutes
High intensity – 1 minute
Rest – 2 minutes
High intensity – 1 minute
Rest – 2 minutes
Cooldown by going slow – 5 minutes

Running Outdoors

When running outdoors, it would probably help to get a stop watch or something that you can use to time yourself. For your high intensity interval, try sprinting as fast as you can for 1 minute. Slow down, walk for 2 minutes and repeat. If this is too hard for you, you can stop moving all together when resting.

Treadmill/Elliptical

Most treadmills and ellipticals already have an interval function on there for you. The more advanced ones allow you to change the speeds of the intervals which is good. If your treadmill does not have this function, you can manually switch the speeds. For the treadmill, we like to sprint at a speed of 8 for high intensity and jog at a speed of 5 for the rest period. This might be too hard for you at first but don’t worry, just work your way up.

Bike

You can do interval training on both a stationary and a real bike. Remember to go all out for the 1 minute of high intensity.

Jump roping, Walking Uphill and More

Remember, you can do interval training for any cardiovascular exercise. For jump roping, you can jump with everything you got for one minute and pause for 2. Try to incorporate interval training into your exercises and it will definitely help with your fat loss. It might be hard at first but the more you do it, the easier it gets.