Is HIIT Primarily For Weight Loss Or Muscle Building?

By Russ Howe


There is so much conflicting advice in the gym that most people find it almost impossible to learn how to build muscle effectively. One of the biggest areas of concern surrounds HIIT.

Many people who perform this type of exercise are going for weight loss, however there is also a major use here for those looking to improve size and strength.

If most men were honest, they'd happily admit that they don't do enough cardiovascular exercise. It's often seen as the boring alternative to resistance training and they don't have the same level of drive for it.

Many individuals wrongly presume that cardio exercise is purely for weight loss, or they believe the age old misconception that treadmills are for women and weights are for guys.

However, if your primary goal is hypertrophy you are the exact type of person who should be performing regular cardiovascular workouts and one of the best forms of this is high intensity interval training. Not only is it great for fat loss, it'll also help you to build more lean tissue.

There are several key differences between high intensity cardio sessions and steady state workouts. If you've ever used an exercise bike for an hour at a steady pace you've probably felt a little bit bored at certain stages. That's one of the main drawbacks to this style of training and something which high intensity sessions will eliminate.

By constantly changing the resistance and intensity level of your gym session you will be able to challenge your body in ways it has never been pushed before. In fact, many of the benefits to this type of training have more in common with weights than they do with cardiovascular exercise.

While performing a resistance exercise your body is tapping into it's anaerobic exercise. This is the same system you'll use while performing any high intensity cardio workouts, too.

Things get even better when you look at how your body burns calories during this type of training. During a normal session your body stops burning calories when you stop exercising. However, if you have performed an interval session your body will continue to burn calories at an increased rate for 16 hours afterwards! This is also known as 'the afterburn effect'.

Despite growing in popularity over the last few years, HIIT remains a largely unused form of cardiovascular exercise. Most gym users believe that they need to punish themselves with long, dull sessions on bikes and treadmills to lose fat and it is simply not true. If you are learning how to build muscle more effectively, this form of training will work very nicely alongside your resistance training.




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