Intensity
I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting over the last several week. I have come to a few conclusions that I want to share with you over the next several posts. Here is the first one. Intensity really matters.
Here is what I mean.
I have tried workouts where I go for long distances at a time. If you have payed any attention to my workout rss feed in the bottom right of the blog you will have noticed that I can run and/or do the elliptical machine for very long periods of time. It is not uncommon for me to go over 10 miles in a session. Maybe to a marathon runner that is not to far, but for a guy that still weighs 240 lbs that is a fair distance.
When I have tested the calorie consumption of that level of effort I find that I can burn off about 1500 calories in 90-120 minutes. It just depends on the route and how intense I feel like pushing it.
Now, that is impressive and has helped me lose weight, but personally I do not want to have to spend my whole day working out in order to burn off the number of calories that I need to in order to lose weight. Personally I have a life and I would like to live it a little more. I heard about HIT work outs (high intensity training) from the Body for Life program and I have been able to employ this type of training with great success.
Let me explain how it works, then I will give you a sample workout. The idea is to reeve up your metabolism by making your body really push itself oer shorter distances. Basically you are going to go faster and then slower for specific intervals. This speeding up and slowing down does not allow your body to get into a rythem and forces it to work even harder to go over the same distance.
Let me say that this is not for the faint of heart. It will likely be the most gut wrenching thing that you will do. And at the end, once your done heaving, your going to love it!
Once I am done on a long distance workout I tend to feel exhausted, but physiologically my body feels normal again (ie my heart rate, sweating, metabolism) almost as soon as I stop. But when I do the wind sprints I find that I do not stop sweating for some time, and I can almost feel the fat being sucked off my body. And most important of all – I feel more energized than when I began.
On the technical side 15 minutes of long distance training on an intense day will yield a calorie expenditure of about 200-250 calories. When I do the HIT sprints I will burn almost 3x as much! And even after I have stopped I can still feel the effect of the workout!
So if I want to have a life the HIT exercise is the best way to go. I can burn 3x as many calories, which means less overall work, and more overall life!
Here is how it can work. There are a thousand variations to this.
2min – warm up 50% full speed
1min – fullspeed ahead (on a machine I increase the resistance and the rate at which I move)
1min – 60% capacity. Lower the resistance and speed
Then I repeat that 6 times, and then end with 2 more minutes of a cool down.
Not too hard to explain, but extremely challenging to do. I Love it.
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Really very good explanation of how much calorie is burned.But it is extremely challenging to do that. But I don't think we feel normal for some time after too much exhaustion.