High intensity training?

[momo77735]

The idea is you spend like 10 mins sprinting or equivalent and that you lose calories trying to recover from the exercise which in turn is apparantly more effective than cardio?

What are your thoughts ?

[Will404]

I thought that it was more to try and build up power and speed than loosing weight?

[Jiff Lemon]

High Intensity Interval training (HIIT) is quite effective way of burning fat. However, a lot depends on the condition your in at the moment.

[chrestomanci]

What is the system? Just sprint as hard as possible for 10 minutes?

I have a 10 minute cycle ride to get between my home and the railway station as part of my morning commute, and I usually push quite hard. Loads of other people do similar short bike rides to work. If the high intensity theory worked, then I should have become supper fit and lean by now.

I reality, I don't think my cycling performance has improved much over longer rides, compared with before I started cycling part of the way to work.

[fuddam]

get into the habit of a MINIMUM of 40 mins in a session. If you simply train short / high intensity, you'll simply be using up your carb stores, and not reaching the point where the body needs to burn up fat to keep going.

Last night went for a run with 5 other peeps. We only run offroad when possible. Did an hour long in the forests at dusk (velly velly cool), and in the middle of the normal pace, we also did a short/high intensity hill climbing circuit of our devising. All out for 10 - 15 mins, in and out of a steep gully. Maxed the body out, will help speed in future running, increasing long term thresholds etc.

won't do much with only short sprints

[clairedc]

From my experience, if you're just starting out then you should do shorter intervals and longer rests, then work your way up... so 2 minutes high interval to 3 minutes rest then maybe 2 minutes high interval and 2 minutes rest, then 2:1 minutes. Once you have that sussed, up your minutes exercising hard and decrease your resting time ratio again, but remember that resting should not mean stopping completely.

[fuddam]

my method is to initially do a warm-up run (or whatever exercise you're doing) eg a couple of miles

Then find a hill

mark a start point, end point, and 2/3 point up the hill. Mebbe 100 - 200m total.

Run from start point to 2/3 at 60-70% pace, then last 1/3 at full pace. Check time.

jog back to start point immediately

Run same thing, but faster than first time. Repeat, getting faster EVERY time.

Try 8 - 10 laps. You'll be finished.

Then run a mile or 2 to cool down. Doing this kinda training will radically improve your hill climbing ability, overall speed, endurance, cardio etc. Do it maybe once a week. Not more.

[theuncharmed]

My 2 cents.

Running hills like fuddam says is the ticket.

But, if you're unfit, heavily overweight or have any pain in your knees as you're doing the hills STOP.

I pushed passed the pain and ended up with ITBS [Iliotibial band syndrome]. Basically where your knee cap rubs against the IT band running down the side of your leg. Hurts, takes an age to heal and screws with your running gait too.

Caused me to crash out of the Paras for a full 6 months!

Start easy, get some long runs in and then find some hills. And yeah follow fuddam's advice.

If you find you can't run hills, follow the same advice but on the flat and preferably off-road too.