HIIT Workouts

HIIT

High Intensity Interval Training!

 

 

What is a HIIT workout?

  I am glad you asked! According to Wikipedia, Hiit (High Intensity Interval Training)

is an enhanced form of interval training, an exercise strategy alternating periods of short intense anaerobic exercise with less-intense recovery periods. HIIT is a form of cardiovascular exercise. Usual HIIT sessions may vary from 4–20 minutes. These short, intense workouts provide improved athletic capacity and condition, improved glucose metabolism, and improved fat burning.

 

I discovered HIIT just recently in my weight loss journey and it has been an awesome discovery!  I previously believed that the only way to work out and to get in shape was dependent on hours spent in the gym or doing cardio on a treadmill.  I was always on the "the more calories burnt" the more pounds will come off philosophy.  However, this philosophy stopped working for me once I was over 40.  There have only been a few rare occasions in my life that I truly enjoyed exercise.  I could probably count them on one hand to be perfectly honest.  So trudging away on a treadmill for hours a week without any results was quite disheartening to say the least.  After a while, I just gave up.  I didn't lose a pound or gain a pound either way, so why bother at all? 

 

Most of weight came off following the a modified Paleo/Primal/Low Carb approach, without any exercise at all.  Which by the way, made me a very happy girl!  However, once my aches, pains, and illnesses seemed to disappear, I started to desire exercise! YUP, I said it! Desire exercise! WHAT?  Crazy, I know.  I ran across a FB page called Big Hiit (formally Totally Lean Fitness) where Jen posted daily HIIT workouts on video that were very easy to follow.  The videos have you complete a set of 5 whole body exercises using minimal equipment in 1 minute intervals, repeated 3 times.   I decided to give them a try, was done in under 20 minutes and was hooked!  She recommended using a Gym Boss Interval Timer on my smart phone, to make tracking your intervals so easy.  I have lost an additional 5 pounds since starting HIIT at the end of Feb 2013.  More importantly I have lost over 9 inches on my body and am another pants size smaller.

 

I am not quite where I want to be yet physically, so I will spare you all the pain of seeing me make videos LOL.  However, I strongly recommend checking out Jen's page on FB called Big HIIT to get you started.  As this blog and page progress, I will add more HIIT ideas and workouts here as well!

 

So do you have 20 minutes in your day to HIIT?  It is the best discovery since......hmmmm...I was going to say since sliced bread :) but since I don't eat bread, its not the best analogy!

 

Get Fit with HIIT today.  Give it a try you wont be sorry!

 

- Lumpy Out

April 16 2013

Can you do a HIIT Workout at a playground?

YUP!

These are tires at a local playground that I take my children to on a regular basis.  Typically you would have found me sitting on a bench at the edge of the playground watching my children play. However, this time, these tires looked very tempting!  Hmmmm, what could I do here?  Well lets see.... I ran the length of them back and forth 5 times, lunged with each leg across each tire the entire length 5 times, did squats on one side of tire then jumped across to the other side the length of all of them (only 2 times for that LOL), side lunged on each tire across all the tires 2 times, and did about twenty squat jumps from ground up to top of a tire.   The workout was crazy good!  However, the absolute best part of it?  The look on my kids faces while they watched in amazement at Mom doing this workout!