1. You are not bothering me.
2. You missed my point about resetting/correcting your metabolism. When you start increasing
calories, the likelihood is that you will gain some weight along the way. It is a necessary evil in order to correct your metabolism. A short term negative for a long term positive if you will. So no, I doubt you can meet your
goal by Valentine's Day if you have truly plateaued.
3. I don't care if you take my advice or not about correcting your metabolism. If you do though, I would not jump your
calories so high at first. I would knock them up slowly, maybe 10% per week or maybe even every other week. Track your weight and measurements. If nothing is going crazy in terms of increases, keep it up. Just as it took a long time to wreak havoc on your metabolism, it takes some time to repair it.
4. I wrote an article on
HIIT. I know I posted it someplace around here. I will post it again here so you can see what exactly it is. If you still have questions, feel free to ask.
Popular training methods come around in cycles of popularity every few years. Lately, everyone and their mother's will tell you that weight training with 8-12 reps,
HIIT, and a balanced
diet will help anyone and everyone.
First, let me say these guidelines are a good starting point for most beginners and intermediate lifters. However, we all know that each of us are metabolically and physiologically unique. A host of variables plays a role as to what methods will work best for you, such as somatotype, training age, etc. Where 8-12 reps may be ideal for most individuals, realize that this ideal rep range will decrease as training age increases for instance. By training age, I simply mean, how many years you have been CONSISTENTLY training.
I am not posting this to point fingers at what is right or wrong in my opinion currently. I am posting this to say that I think
HIIT is here to stay. We all throw the recommendation out there to anyone who is looking to lose
fat to implement
HIIT, but why? What is
HIIT and why is it better then steady state
cardio?
Steady state
cardio (running at the same intensity for prolonged periods of time) uses primarily
fat stores as its
energy source. Back in the day, this fact led many to believe that SS
cardio was the preferred method of exercise for shedding the
pounds.
How does
HIIT differ from this? Actually, first let's discuss what
HIIT is for those who may not know.
HIIT is simply the alteration between high intensity and low intensity training intervals. This can be done with any form of exercise, such as running, cycling, swimming, elliptical training, etc. For instance, you may set up a 1:2 protocol. You will set a total training duration, in this case assume 20 minutes. You can split these 20 minutes up however you would like. For simplicity's sake, let's assume we do 10, 2-minute intervals totaling the 20 minutes. Each of these 10 intervals is then broken up into the high/low intensity intervals. Going back to the 1:2 ratio we set up, we would exercise at high intensity for 40 seconds and immediately follow this with a low intensity bout lasting 80 seconds totalling a single 2-minute interval. Follow this principle for each of the 10 intervals. That, in a nutshell is
HIIT.
So, back to how
HIIT differs from SS
cardio.
HIIT uses primarily carbohydrates as its fuel source. This may not seem logical to you; it may seem better to burn
fat then carbohydrates if
fat loss is the
goal. Stick with me though!
Total daily
energy expenditure (TDEE) plays a much larger role in
fat loss, and
HIIT drastically increases your TDEE. So now we are talking
energy (calorie) balances instead of
fat burning. After a bout of
HIIT, something known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) is increased.
While you may burn more
calories and
fat during SS
cardio, when you factor EPOC into the equation, you actually end up burning more
energy performing
HIIT rather then SS
cardio.
The beauty of
HIIT lies in the fact that you do not have to, nor should you be able to, train as long as you would with SS
cardio. In a nutshell,
HIIT is more effective due to the increase EPOC and
energy utilization and more efficient due to the time consumption issue.
There are many other benefits of
HIIT. It tends to keep your Type IIa muscle fibers on the fast twitch side of the spectrum. Type II muscle fibers are those used for quick utilization, explosion, and power for activities such as sprints or weight training. Type IIb are for pure power. Type IIa are your middle of the road fibers. They can take on qualities of both fast twitch or slow twitch. SS
cardio tends to keep these Type IIa fibers on the slow (type I) fiber side and
HIIT tends to keep these on the fast (type II) fiber side.
Although
HIIT is considered to be an
anaerobic exercise, it has been proven to also improve aerobic capacity.
It has been shown that
HIIT elevates the level of growth hormone (GH) in the bloodstream, which is never a bad thing for those of you looking to add lean muscle. (This should be all of you!)
Some studies show that your resting metabolic rate remains elevated for over a 24-hour period after a bout of
HIIT.
There is more to be said, but I hope at this point, for those of you who did not understand why
HIIT is so popular right now, you now see the importance of utilizing this type of training. For those of you looking to shed some
fat or for those of you looking to maintain muscle while improving your cardiovascular systems, this is for you.
And as always, what works best for one, may not work best for another. With this said, don't be afraid to mix up your routines such as 2 days of
HIIT per week and 1 day of SS
cardio.
