If you’re looking to kick your cardio routine up a notch, vastly improve your fitness and lung capacity, and burn through more calories each session, then you’ve got to add interval training. Interval training entails alternating between bouts of higher efforts (at about 90 percent of your maximum heart rate level) and then periods of slower, recovery periods. Intervals are not only an essential for anyone training for a running or bike race, but can be used by anyone looking to improve their game or general fitness. Because the sessions will get your heart beating much faster, get your lungs building their ability to get oxygen sent to your muscles, you will be able to go farther, longer, and faster.
Starting Interval Training
The best way to start adding interval training into your routing is to pick an activity: running, biking, and using an elliptical are excellent choices, but you can even use a rowing machine, stair stepper, or swim. Start by doing a warm-up of 5-10 minutes at a relaxed pace, what you would generally do your routine at; on a scale of 1 to 10 your effort should feel like a 7 or 8. Then, do one minute almost as hard as you can (an effort of 9) by upping the pace. Follow this by a two minute recovery at an effort level of 6 or 7, and then repeat the cycle and follow it with a short cool-down. Start with adding a few intervals and then work your way up to doing a total of 10 minutes of hard efforts.
Tough Interval Training
Play around with different types of intervals, by changing the times of your hard efforts and recovery paces. You can do shorter sprints of 30 seconds hard with one minute recovery, or do two or three minutes hard and then recover. You can further mix it up by varying the resistance or incline along with the pace. Intervals are excellent tools to add to your training routine; you can do them up to three times a week, but be sure to rest or do a steady, recovery cardio workout at least a day between sessions. Soon you will notice that the days you do your steady cardio, they will be feeling easier and you will be encouraged by improvement in your interval days as well!
By: Caitlin Chock, Home Fitness Guru
