Intervals training, referred to as High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT, has been catching on for years as the go to exercise for anyone interested in getting into great shape and increasing their fat loss capabilities. It’s essentially the act of doing exercises in a short, intense time frame followed by a rest and then repeating it in intervals, or sets. (Hence why I named this article intervals training instead of high intensity interval training.)
The idea is that by increasing your heart rate and pushing your body hard for a short time – you gain a better effect then doing an exercise at moderate or low intensity for a long period of time. In fact, studies have shown that the benefits of intervals training is equal to that of long distance cardio, while being more time efficient.
Here are a few reasons someone would prefer to do HIIT to long distance cardio:
1) It’s more time efficient.
2) It forces you to push yourself.
3) It gives great benefits.
An interesting thing about intervals training is that there has been at least one study that showed that some HIIT can even improve performance in endurance exercises – which is extremely fascinating. Aside from being able to more easily get into shape, maybe these kind of studies will give more insight into the human body’s relationship to exercise.
Here are two ways of doing HIIT:
1) Use the tabata method, and do 20 seconds of ultra-intense exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest. Repeat this for 4 minutes or 8 intervals. You can do this with ANY exercise, and it’s ridiculously difficult but will give you a really, really good workout in a short amount of time. I recommend warming up for 5 minutes before you start the intervals.
2) Do 1 minute of medium to high intensity exercise (not ultra intense like tabata though) followed by 1 minute of low intensity exercise. Repeat anywhere from 4 to 8 times depending on your level. Again, I recommend warming up for 5 minutes before the workout.
Specific exercises that work well with HIIT:
You can do intervals training with pretty much any exercise, but there are some exercises that work especially well with it. Here are some of those exercises:
1) Sprinting
2) Swimming
3) Rowing
4) Anything that you could do a cardio workout with.
That being said, you can do HIIT with any kind of exercise, including with normal body weight training and light weight training. The tabata method is especially popular with body weight training. Chances are you will be completely exhausted after 4 minutes of pushups with the tabata method. 
-Rafi
