Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Top 3 Reasons to Do High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

Episode Date: January 2, 2018

If your goal is to get or stay lean and maintain your cardiovascular health, you don’t have to grind out a single long session of grueling cardio. Ever. That’s right… - No boring jogs. - No droning away on one of the hamster wheels in the gym. - No sacrificing hours and hours every week. In fact, if you know what you’re doing (and you will by the end of this episode), you can get a lot more out of doing a lot less cardio than you think. If you know what you’re doing with your diet, you don’t need to exercise more than 4 to 6 hours per week to get as lean as you’d like. Yup, just 3 to 5 hours of weightlifting and 1 to 2 hours of cardio per week is more than enough. So, in this episode, I’m going to explain 5 reasons why high-interval intensity training is my cardio of choice and almost a bit of a “secret weapon” for getting and staying lean. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series where I answer one common question quickly and simply because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less. And that's what I do in these episodes. In this video slash podcast, I want to share with you the top three reasons why you should consider doing high intensity interval training, and especially when you are cutting to lose fat. So first, what is high intensity interval training or HIT for short? It is a method of exercising that has you alternate between bouts of all out high intensity effort and low intensity recovery periods. So the idea is during your sprints, during your high intensity intervals, you're really pushing

yourself absolutely as hard as you can. And then during the low intensity period, you're backing off and you're catching your breath and you're preparing for the next sprint. Now, most people know that, but that doesn't tell you exactly what to do. For example, how intense should your high intensity intervals be? How restful and how long should your high intensity intervals be? How restful and how long should your low intensity periods be? How long should your HIIT workouts be? How frequently should you do them? These are the questions you need to have good answers for if you are going to

not only do HIIT, but get the most out of HIIT. Now, before I answer those questions though, let's quickly run through these three reasons why I think you should consider doing HIIT, especially when you're cutting. So the first one is you burn more fat doing just four to six 30 second sprints with four minute rest periods in between those sprints than they did with 60 minutes of incline treadmill walking. And that's pretty impressive because the HIIT workouts then they ranged between about 17 and 27 minutes. So 17 and 27 minutes of HIIT style training burns more fat than 60 minutes of low intensity walking. And those results have been replicated in other studies as well. So my point here is just this, if you're looking to burn as much fat in as little time as possible,

and if you're looking to keep your cardio workouts short, but also effective, then HIIT is the way to go. And that brings me to the second reason why I think you should consider doing HIIT when you are cutting and it is better for preserving muscle. So of course, when you're dieting for fat loss, your major goal is to lose fat, not muscle. You want to lose as much fat as possible and as little muscle as possible. And if you're new to weightlifting, then ideally you'd be able to gain muscle while you're losing fat. And of course, there are several strategies you can use to accomplish that. So one, you can use an aggressive, but not reckless calorie deficit. So let's say keep yourself in a 20 to 25% deficit. That would be aggressive as opposed to a 30 plus

percent deficit. I would say that's where you start getting into reckless territory. You can also eat a high protein diet that of course helps you preserve muscle while you're cutting. It also helps you lose fat faster and you can spend a few hours per week doing resistance training workouts. And lastly, you can keep your cardio to a minimum. Now, the problem with that last point though, is if you're going to keep your cardio to a minimum. So if you're going to do as little cardio as possible, how do you do that? Plus burn enough energy and burn enough fat in your cardio workouts to make a difference. And that is one of the reasons why I really like HIIT. It allows you to do like when I'm cutting,

even when I'm getting really lean, when I'm, when I want to get down to the, you know, six, 7% body fat range, I do no more than an hour and a half to max two hours per week of cardio per week, not per day per week. And I start with about an hour per week and I usually increase it slowly as my cut goes on and I have to continue bolstering my energy expenditure. goes on and I have to continue bolstering my energy expenditure. Now, if I were to replace that HIIT with walking, of course it would help to some degree. It would increase my energy expenditure a little bit. Like if I did two hours of walking per week, you know, I'd probably burn, let's just say six to 700 calories, which is something, but two hours of HIIT cardio per week does a lot more in terms of fat loss. And one final reason why I really like HIIT when I'm cutting is it can help curb hunger and cravings, which of course is always welcome because overeating is the easiest way to screw

up a diet. And especially when you are lean, wanting to get really lean, you have to be very accurate with your calorie intake and you really just don't have much margin for error. Now, some people say that low intensity cardio actually stimulates your appetite and makes you want to eat more, but research shows that this is probably not true, at least in most people. Some people do seem to experience that, but most people don't. However, studies show that high intensity interval training in particular can reliably cause changes in your brain that decreases your hunger and decreases your desire to eat and increases the amount of fullness that you feel from the food that you do eat. Dewey. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of

word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay, so at this point, if you are sold and you want to try some HIIT during your current cut or your next cut, you're wondering how do you go about it? You know, I posed some questions earlier that you're probably now wondering about.

And honestly, I could record a long video, a podcast on just that, but I'm going to compress the information down and just give you the long story short. So in terms of the type of cardio, my two favorite styles of cardio for hit are biking and rowing because they are no impact, which means that it won't get in the way of your weightlifting. For example, if you were to go out and do sprints, that's very good hit, but it's going to wreck your legs. You can forget about squatting and deadlifting regularly and heavily if you're going to be also sprinting a few times a week. I've tried it and I just couldn't make it work. So biking and rowing for that reason and also because they mimic weightlifting movements. And that's probably why research shows that those two styles of cardio and biking in

particular seem to interfere the least with your weightlifting. Again, with the cellular adaptations that occur due to weightlifting. So another very important point with HIIT is that your high intensity intervals need to be truly high intensity. A lot of people think that they are doing HIIT when I'd say it's more like moderate intensity interval training, because during those sprints, you need to be pushing yourself to the point where you feel like you can't breathe air fast enough. You can't get enough air into your body. That's like, you know, 90% of your all out effort. If you can hold a conversation or if you can easily concentrate on, let's say a TV show or a book during your

high intensity sprints, you're doing it wrong. And you should also be reaching this level fast, like within 10 or 15 seconds of starting your sprint, you should be at this level, which just brings up a minor point is that going fast is more important in these workouts than pushing against heavy resistance. So let's say if you're on a rowing machine or if you're on a bike, you don't want to be pedaling slowly against heavy resistance. You want to be pedaling very quickly against lighter resistance, just enough resistance to prevent you from spinning out. But the idea again is once you go, you start pedaling as hard as you can, as fast as you can, or rowing as quickly as you can. Now, in terms of how long your high intensity intervals should be, research shows that you should be going for about 50 to 60%

of the time that you can go at your all out intensity level. So for example, I find that on a bike, like on an upright bike, when I get to that 90% all out, you know, I'm, I'm sucking in air as quickly as I can. I can't talk. I can't focus. I'm just going. I can probably go for about three minutes at that level before just, just having to stop. So therefore my high intensity interval sprints should be, let's say 90 to 120 seconds long. And yeah, that's kind of long and that's hard, but that's the point of this style of cardio. It's very hard, but you just don't have to do as much of it in terms of overall time. Now, if you want to be OCD about it, you can test for yourself what your limit is. So you can, you know, say if you're going to bike, if you're going to

row or whatever, you can push yourself and get yourself to that point, just all out intensity and see how long you can go before you pass out. And then you can adjust accordingly. Or, you know, if you're new to HIIT, you don't really want to do that. Just go with 60 second high intensity intervals. That's a good place to start and simply work them up as you get better. Now, in terms of your low intensity, so your recovery, so you've just sprinted for, let's say, 60, 90 or 120 seconds. How long should you now recover? And a good place to start is with a one to two ratio of high intensity to low intensity. So if you did a 60 second high intensity sprint, then you are going

to do a two minute, you're going to do 120 seconds of recovery. Now, when I say recovery, that doesn't mean stand still. You should, it's active recovery. You should still be going. So again, I mean, if we go back to pedaling or rowing, you're still pedaling or rowing. You're just going a lot slower now and you're catching your breath, getting ready for the next sprint. And as you get fitter, you can work toward a one-to-one ratio. So let's say if it's 90 seconds of sprinting, then it's 90 seconds of recovery followed by sprinting and so forth. In terms of duration of HIIT workouts, a good, pretty standard protocol is you start out with about two or three minutes of warmup and you do about 20 to 25 minutes of intervals, followed by

two or three minutes of warm down and you're done. And lastly, in terms of frequency. So obviously if I'm recommending anywhere from one to two hours of HIIT per week, we're looking at anywhere from two to four HIIT workouts per week is pretty standard. I mean, that's what I do when I'm cutting. I start with two and then at about the midpoint, I go up to three and then at about the three quarters point, I go up to four and just ride that out until the end. Now, if you're worried that adding HIIT in any amount to your current cutting regimen, which should include a few hours of weightlifting per week, let's say three to five hours of heavy weightlifting per week. If you're worried that

adding hit into that is going to cut too much into your recovery and mess up your strength training workouts, or even lead to overtraining. If you follow the advice I just gave you, if you keep your workouts relatively short and you don't do more than, I mean, four is at the high end, but if you keep, let's say on average, most people do two or three HIIT workouts per week, you won't have any issues. doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies

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