Why Interval Training Works

Why Interval Training Works

Yes, your body would use more energy if you extend yourself to the higher range of your aerobic training zone. But your body won’t necessarily get that jolt that only comes from interval training.

So remember: your goal with interval training is to give your body a healthy jolt where it suddenly says to itself:

“Whoa! We need more energy here FAST, this person has increased their heart rate from 180 beats per minute to 190 beats per minute! Let’s go to any available cell, like those fat cells down at the waist, and break them down via catabolism so that this person can get the energy that they need!”

Remember (sorry to be repetitive, but this is very important): the whole point of interval training in this way is to give your body a sudden, limited, healthy jolt where it needs more energy – quick!

If you simply increase your speed and stay there, while your body may, overall burn some more calories, it won’t get that jolt.

Also bear in mind that interval training can indeed last longer than 30 seconds or a minute.

Some experts suggest that you can use interval training for 30-40 minutes, depending on your state of health and what your overall exercise regimen looks like.

The reason we’re focusing on 30 seconds to 1 minute is simply to give you a clear understanding that interval training is a kind of mini training within a training program.

And, as always, don’t overdo it with your interval training. Your goal here is to become healthier and stronger, and lose weight in that process.

You gain nothing if you run so fast or bike so hard during interval training that you hurt yourself. You will actually undermine your own health, and possibly have to stop exercising while torn muscles or other ailments heal.

Why Interval Training Boosts Metabolism

Why Interval Training Boosts Metabolism

Why? Because during this 30 seconds or 1 minute, you give your body a bit of a jolt.

Not an unhealthy jolt; remember, we’re talking about quick bursts here, not suddenly racing around the track or through the park! By giving your body an interval jolt, it automatically – and somewhat unexpectedly – has to turn things up a notch.

And to compensate for your extra energy requirements, the body will burn more calories.

It’s essential for you to always keep in mind that interval training only works when it’s at intervals. This may seem like a strange thing to say (and even difficult to understand), but it’s actually very straightforward.

The metabolism-boosting benefits that you enjoy as a result of interval training are primarily due to the fact that your body, suddenly, needs to find more energy.

While it was chugging along and supplying your energy needs during your cardiovascular exercising, it all of a sudden needs to go grab some more for 30 seconds or a minute; and in that period, it will boost your metabolism as if it were given a nice, healthy jolt.

As you can see, if you suddenly decided to extend your 30 second or 1 minute sprint into a 20 minute sprint, you simply wouldn’t experience all of the benefits.

Ways to Speed Up the Metabolism

Ways to Speed Up the Metabolism

The popular and widely respected Internet publication i-Village highlights 11 key ways to speed up metabolism. To most easily introduce and discuss them here, we’ve taken these 11 key ideas and broken them down into 3 broad categories:

1. Exercise
2. Lifestyle
3. Diet

As you go through each of the 11 key points, you’ll certainly note that there is some overlap between them. For example, it’s hard to imagine that introducing exercise into your life isn’t, in many ways, a lifestyle choice.

Similarly, integrating all kinds of metabolism-boosting foods into your diet is surely going to influence how you spend your time (probably less time in fast food line-ups, for one!).

So with this being said, please don’t get bogged down in the categories; they are merely provided here to help organize these points, and to help you easily refer to them in the future. The important thing for you to do is understand each of the 14 points, and evaluate how you can responsibly integrate them into your life.

Variety To Your Workout

Variety To Your Workout

You can’t (unfortunately) send a memo to your body and ask it to please speed up metabolism.

If you could, then that would be amazing! But that’s not reality at all. What we have to do is force the body to say to itself: hey, I need to speed up metabolism because this person needs more energy!

And one of the best ways for you to force the body to have this kind of thinking is to add variety to your workouts.

Variety Exercising and Your Metabolism

Variety Exercising and Your Metabolism

They say that variety is the spice of life, and this is indeed quite true. But despite this awareness, many people don’t spice up their exercise program; which is surprising, since doing so often leads to valuable metabolism-boosting benefits.

There are a few easy ways to add variety to your exercise program. We’ve already talked about interval training, and that is indeed one way to shift your body’s metabolic engine into higher gear.

Other effective ways are to break up a longer routine into smaller parts.

For example, instead of committing to 1×1 hour workout a day, it can be metabolism-boosting to split this up into 2×30 minute workouts; or even, on some occasions, 3×20 minute workouts.

Furthermore, you can add variety into your daily exercise routine without formally exercising.

For example, you can take the stairs instead of the elevator. Or you can start your day with a brisk walk instead of a coffee and the newspaper.

Or, instead of parking close to the grocery store entrance, you can walk the distance between a far away parking spot and the entrance.

All of these tips provide two metabolism-boosting benefits.

Firstly, as you can easily see, they can make exercising more fun. While, indeed, it’s important to have an exercise routine, you don’t want to have a boring exercise routine (because then your chances of stopping are that much greater!).

So adding these new elements to your overall exercise commitment simply helps encourage you to stick with the program. And since exercising is a core part of boosting your metabolism, any technique or tip that helps you continue exercising over the long term is a wise piece of advice.