Are you giving yourself the best chance of being …

23 May Are you giving yourself the best chance of being …

In health and fitness, there is no shortcut, no magic pill or powder. Becoming fit and healthy and staying fit and healthy requires dedication, consistency and work. The fitness industry is full of false promises tricking people to part with many dollars on supplements, ab machines, apps for a 4-minute workout or 7-minutes and fat blasting pills. None of these things are going to get you fit and healthy looking your best and feeling your best.

The industry currently worships the High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), and while I regularly incorporate HIIT into training sessions it is never exclusively on its own. However many are promoting that HIIT can give you the same health and fitness benefits of moving a few hours a day, in just a few minutes instead. It is easy to sell and who wouldn’t want to just get away with a quick 7 minute or 4 minute workout and be done and dusted and get the same results. But do you?

Many HIIT workouts are based upon the famous study done by Professor Izumi Tabata in 1996. 1 Done right HIIT can work but not in 4 minutes and here are the reasons why and the training protocols for Tabata.

• Specificity – Professors Tabata’s study was completed using Olympic speed skaters as subjects. His study used 20 seconds of a very high intensity (170% of VO2max) followed by 10 seconds rest repeated 8 times for 4 minutes. The exercise was completed on a cycle ergometer and was done 4 days per week along with steady state training.\So as you can see to be doing Tabata in the true sense, you would need

1. To be an Olympic athlete,
2. Have a mechanically braked cycle ergometer, train at 170% of VO2 max (bring the bucket for vomiting and phone ready to call the ambulance)
3. Train 5 days a week for 1 hour with at a steady state of 70% VO2max.

If you are not doing these things, then you are not truly doing Tabata training. However doing some interval work similar to Tabata or some other HIIT protocol is totally okay, but it is important to note that training other energy systems and doing other metabolic work like steady-state cardio are just as important.

Moving more doesn’t necessarily equate to being fitter either. But there is no substitute for putting in a little effort that is required to stay healthy and gain real fitness.

The longest-living cultures and suffer the least chronic disease on the planet are those that engage in roughly 2-3 hours of moderate intensity physical activity most days. You need to be healthy before you can get fit. There are no short cuts or quick fixes to getting healthy and staying fit!