Exercise
How Often Should You Be Doing Interval Training?
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Interval training is a great way to achieve many of your fitness goals.
If you’re trying to build muscle, interval training can help with this. Fat loss can also be promoted through interval training, and even if you’re just training to tone up, it’s one of the best ways to get the most out of your time.
What are the benefits of interval training?
During interval training, your heart rate varies from low to high, which means that you’ll be burning more calories than you would if you were keeping your heart at a constant rate.
Interval training can also be more comfortable than other types of workouts, since you have some recovery time in between the intense exercise sessions that you’re doing.
Although you’ll usually need that time after pushing yourself!
You can do interval training with many different types of exercise – it doesn’t have to be weight training.
Interval training with cardio is very effective for weight loss and overall health and fitness, so if you aren’t already doing it, you should try to incorporate it into your regular routine.
How often should you do interval training?
Interval training isn’t something that you should do every day.
In fact, you shouldn’t really be exercising every single day of the week anyway (unless you substantially vary your workouts), particularly if the intensity of your exercise sessions are quite high.
You should be exercising at an intensity which is high enough to make you feel like you need a break anyway for at least two days of the week.
If you’re doing interval training with weights, you’ll be building muscle and toning up as well as burning fat.
This means that you will still be burning extra calories for up to 48 hours after you’ve finished your workout.
You can burn maximum calories by doing effective interval training while you’re at the gym, and then make the most of it afterwards if you’ve been using weights.
There is no perfect algorithm for how often you should be doing interval training.
It all depends on what you’re trying to achieve, how close you are to your goal, how physically active and fit you are in general and how much time you have to sacrifice.
Even just three sessions per week of 20 minutes each will allow you to see some results, so start off small and building it up until it’s a regular part of your weekly routine.
How Hard Should You Push Yourself During Interval Training?
Interval training is a common form of exercise where you spend 30-60 seconds exercising at a high intensity level, and then a further 30-60 seconds exercising at a low intensity level.
This is repeating for a period of around 20-30 minutes, thus completing one session of interval training.
However, one of the questions that people wonder is ‘How hard should I push myself?
It’s important to push yourself and work at a high intensity when necessary – and this is a key part of interval training – but you shouldn’t push yourself so hard that you end up doing yourself an injury or feeling like you’re going to pass out as a result of such intense levels of exercise.
Warming Up
The first thing you should do before starting any exercise session is to warm up.
If you start your interval training without warming up beforehand, you will find that not only it is very difficult to do, but you will struggle to reach your full potential.
Small Steps
You shouldn’t start interval training thinking that you have to exercise like crazy for a full minute and reach levels which are way outside of your comfort zone.
You should try to exercise at a level so that you feel like you really need to stop after the period of time has ended.
For example, if you are going to exercise at a high intensity for 30 seconds, you should feel like you need to stop when you get to 25-28 seconds.
If you’re feeling like you could easily keep on going, this is the key that you’re not working hard enough during this period of time.
If you feel like you’re running out of breath very early on and you can’t even manage the time that you’ve set for yourself, drop the intensity down a level or work out at that intensity but for a shorter space of time.
Once you are more comfortable with this level of exercise, you can then increase the intensity over time.
Cater the Workout to Suit You
You shouldn’t be doing exactly the same workout as your friends if you can’t manage it or you feel like they are holding you back.
Each workout should be tailored to you and your individual goals and abilities, and sometimes you might need to vary this from one day to the next. It’s always about you as an individual and what you can handle and achieve.