This year is all about pushing your limits and going all into your workouts, considering more training volume in a shorter time window because let’s face it…we never have time. We all want to accelerate muscle growth, elevate our metabolism, achieve a greater explosive power and significantly reduce body fat.
Numerous studies and researches show that HIIT pumps out twice the body fat in half the time, compared to other cardio routines and workouts.
HIIT workouts are intense and hard on the body – you need to get that or you won’t be able to safely go through a HIIT workout. Here are some tactics that will keep your body in shape and help you perform at peak levels.
DIET
When doing HIIT, you need to fuel up the right way and enough. Depending on the exercises your HIIT includes, you can burn out anywhere from 700-1200 calories per hour + the after-burn that lasts 1-2 days after your training session.
What you’re eating needs to compensate for high-calorie burn that happens during your training. These calories can help you recover faster and generate muscle tissue, enabling your muscles to grow. Your pre-workout meal will also ensure that you have the strength and will perform at elite levels!
As you may think already, just eating more won’t do. You also need to eat the right foods, consume clean calories and calculate your rations. Also, make sure that with HIIT, you always over hydrate! Water loss is a must with any intense HIIT session, so you need to overcompensate by hydrating beyond your normal H2O consumption.
RECOVERY
With HIIT, your body is pushed to its limit for a short period of time. This is why the most important part of a HIIT session is the recovery – both the recovery intervals throughout your session, as well as your recovery after you’re done. If you do not give your body enough time to recover in between intervals, you may end up overtraining or even burning your hard earned muscle during your workout.
The length of the recovery will depend on your current level of fitness. The less fit you are, the longer you will want your recovery interval to be. We recommend starting your interval training with a 1:3 work: rest ratio – meaning you will take three times as much time completing your recovery interval than you do your high-intensity interval.
It is also important that you give your body the time to recovery in between your full HIIT sessions to ensure you are not overtraining. If you are completing HIIT sessions more than 2-3 times per week, you may be overtraining. As a general rule, you want to give yourself at least a day of rest in between HIIT sessions.
BCAAs
Branch-Chained Amino Acids (BCAA) are the building blocks of muscles, that stimulate protein synthesis. BCAAs help to reduce the rate of protein breakdown, improve your workout intensity and actively preserve muscle tissue whenever the body starts to fall into a deficit.
BCAAs can be used as an immediate energy source during your workouts. There are 3 essential amino-acids in Branch-Chained Amino Acids: leucine, isoleucine, and valine. The valine and isoleucine are considered glucogenic amino acids, meaning they can be converted to glucose and serve as an important energy source during exercise to help fight off fatigue during your workouts.
The major and best thing about BCAAs is that, while most of the amino acids are first broken down and processed by the liver, BCAAs go straight to the muscle cells, acting like a direct line of fuel, working on performance and muscle growth.
COMPRESSION GEAR
These are numerous tangible benefits that come with wearing compression gear, especially for anyone dealing with lingering injuries. Compression gear will improve circulation, increase blood flow, eliminate muscle fatigue, stimulate recovery and speed up the healing process…just to name a few of the great benefits.
There are some amazing choices of compression gear that can offer you a performance boost and awesome advantages, such as:
- Knee sleeves/wraps: they help with injury prevention and muscle recovery, eliminate post-workout knee stiffness, offer stability and support you your knees, helping you go through your entire workout without any problems.
- Wrist wraps: give superior levels of support to immobilize the wrist when necessary, takes the pressure and tension off your wrists, eliminate pain and discomfort by securing the wrist in a neutral position. Another option is to get a pair of gloves with integrated wrist wraps that are as good as a simple pair of wraps.
- Calf sleeves: get you that extra calf and shin support, enhance your warm-up, reduce muscle fatigue and damage in the lower legs, enhance blood circulation and muscle recovery, and increase leg power and vertical jump power.
- Leggings: protect against muscle trauma, provide support to the upper leg muscles, reduce muscle vibrations, reduce fatigue, muscle soreness, and long-term overuse injuries, and offer a greater power output to boost performance.
- Elbow sleeves: offer protection against Tennis and Golf Elbow, Forearm Tendonitis, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Arthritis, and Arm Hyperextension Pain, expedite recovery, provide instant relief, help avoid elbow injuries, act as a great performance booster.
- Compression socks: enhance circulation, elevate oxygen levels, remove lactic acid, flush toxins for a faster recovery and a better athletic performance, reduce fatigue, soreness, cramping, aid for spider veins, help you save energy, lessen muscle vibration and prevent injuries.
- Ankle support: activate blood flow, elevate oxygen levels, relieve foot pain, provide optimal ankle stability and heel arch support, support your sole, arch and ankle, reduce fatigue, soreness, cramping and prevent injuries.
Super-efficient HIIT training is the ideal workout for a busy schedule—whether you want to squeeze in a workout during your lunch break or to get in shape for a fast-approaching event. However, slow down, rest often and try not to kill yourself in the process.
Because a HIIT session is so short, you will be working hard the whole time. The best thing though is that this type of training offers a quick way to see results. You may be in pain, you may be sucking at first, but you definitely won't be bored!
