please talk to me about interval training

[iliketea]

After finally deciding to take my fitness seriously, I joined a gym.

I had my induction with a personal trainer this week - told him I get bored rather quickly, but want to improve my fitness (with the hope that weight loss won't be far behind).

He recommended that I do interval training. 30 seconds train, 30 seconds rest for 5-6 minutes each on rower, bike, treadmill and cross trainer, gradually increasing the training time / reducing the rest time over the next few months.

Anyone have experience of using this type of exercise to increase fitness and lose weight - I'm hoping to see some results within a few weeks. In fact, I need to see them in a few weeks to keep me motivated.

I'm very unfit and rather overweight. Does anyone have any success stories they can share with me?

A few years ago I had a personal trainer who I saw about twice a week and she always had me doing interval training-it had a great effect on my body, particularly my legs and I lost weight and toned up quite quickly, it also stops you getting bored and because the high intensity bursts are so short it's achievable-good luck!!

I like it, I get bored too! I do it with my PT and also at aqua. Weirdly, it has increased my stamina, even though there are short rest periods. I no longer push my bike up hills... I ride up!

I have found that (good) snacking has helped with weight loss. I used to only eat meals, but be really hungry so I'd eat a big portion. Now I snack on small handfuls of almonds or mixed seeds in between meals and I'm not as hungry. Nuts and seeds can been seen as high calorie snacks, but it's not empty calories, they have good food value.

Thanks for your replies. It just kind of seems too good to be true. Effectively doing 12 minutes of actual activity in 24 minutes, plus warm up / cool down either just doesn't seem like that much (although it felt like a lot more when I did it earlier!).

I do interval training. It works for me. Your heart rate will be up from the high impact stuff. When they say rest they won't mean actually stopping. So 30 seconds running then 30 seconds walking. It's an active rest.

Yes I do this 3 times a week. Lost 4 1/2 stone now and am fittest I've ever been.

You can move on from 30/30 as fitness progresses. I do 50/10 now. In 4 sets of ten minutes

It's a very efficient way to get quality aerobic exercise (burn calories, get health benefits) and to improve fitness. I've not done it deliberately, but we've supervised DC doing it as part of training for their competitive events.

Interval training is fantastic and definitely blasts fqt and rapidly improves stamina and fitness, but IMO it is probably better to get to a decent level of fitness before doing it, certainly 30 second intervals will almost certainly either be too hard or not effective (you wont be working as hard as you need to to get results) if you are out of shape.

So I would recommend maybe a month of steady state cardio sessions of 20-30 minutes a few times a week and then start introducing 30 seconds of high intensity (you should be desperate for the 30 secs to end) then a minute recovery, for 10-12 minutes. Gradually increase the high intensity to one minute intervals. Don't forget to strength train as well as this, it's really important!

I think if you are very unfit, and not all that young the cost/benefit ratio of HIIT may not stack up.
The intense bits are going to put your hr & pb up very high if you're unfit to start with

I am of course thinking of Andrew Marr and his stroke..I believe he was following the advice of Michael Mosley?

Sure I may be overstating the risk but I agree with Sleepwhenidie that it may be better to start with steady state cardio

I have been monitoring my heart rate and it's sitting around 140 - 145 during the intensity, down to 135-140 during the rest periods.

When I had a health check done, my resting heart rate was 72. I also was measurer has having low to moderate fitness (I think because I have a reasonably active / physical job).

I'm 35 (young I think ).

145 is about 65% of your max hr, so not all that intense...but given what you've said it sounds like your intervals are pretty safe :o

Yes, with High intensity intervals (the high intensity is required if you're only going to do 10-12 intervals and get results) should be more like 80-90% of your max heart rate. Having said that, you can work at lower intensity and still interval train, but you will need to do it for longer (or more) intervals to achieve what you want.

lower intensity intervals sounds a bit like fartlek training, which (as I understand it) is make it up as you go along intervals

if it stops you getting bored stick with it Iliketea!
probably the main reason for failure of exercise to produce results is failure to stick with it:o

good luck and let us know how you get on