HIIT Cardio Versus Fartlek Workout
HIIT cardio is the new fad spreading through gyms in Europe and North America, the reason for this … it’s fast, efficient, and it works!
High intensity interval training is something that athletes and runners in particular have known about for a long time. Fartlek training, translated from Swedish, is “speed game” and this has been a popular physical training method for runners for a long time and a method that has been shown to burn more fat than running at a steady pace. Fartlek’s training combines slow-paced running with high-paced interval running, an example that most people who have played soccer will be familiar with is jogging across the pitch, running across, jogging across long and then run wide again.
Although Fartlek training is still a great physical training method, HIIT’s Tabatha protocol shed light on the possibility of dramatically condensing a workout without taking away any of the benefits. The problem with the Tabatha high intensity interval training protocol is that it sounds bogus; No one really believes that a 4-minute workout can shed fat, and while the 8 circuits that engage in the Tabatha method are extremely difficult, athletes often tend to feel like they’ve cheated themselves out of the gym after 4 minutes. The way bodybuilders chose to incorporate the Tabatha HIIT Cardio protocol into their sessions was to perform a 4-minute session on each side of the normal bodybuilding routine. This is often a very popular way to use HIIT without feeling like you’ve been fooling yourself.
The Tabatha protocol will work for anyone who uses it. What we must all bear in mind is that the time we spend in the gym is not in direct correlation with the results obtained in the gym. Always remember the famous saying “you can train hard or you can train hard, you can’t do both.” A great example of this is the direct comparison of the traditional one hour session on the treadmill to burn fat at a slow and steady pace versus the very popular and newly discovered 30 sets in 20 minutes of kettlebell exercises. Studies show that not only are more calories burned in the actual training session of the shorter period of activity, but participants show greater muscle definition, less body fat, and much higher fitness levels. This is just one of the ways that training harder for shorter periods of time has been shown to be more beneficial.
You’ll often hear boxers over training for a fight and not feeling fresh when the big night rolls around, which can have devastating effects, think of Amir Khan in his most recent outing against Danny Garcia. He was originally primed for a fight a few months earlier before Lamont Peterson was banned for using illegal substances. After being stopped in 4 rounds just a couple of months after peaking in a fight that never happened, many experts and coaches around the world attributed it to overtraining. There are others, like the never-forthright Chris Eubank Senior, who claims that training is a myth and a state of mind and it’s more about becoming stale during training, which is the biggest concern. While this may be the case for boxers, there is a lot of scientific evidence in bodybuilding on how overtraining can stop results altogether. For example, studies have shown time and time again that biceps progress stops with excessive training, and in fact, as soon as the biceps is overworked, the muscle shuts down and no growth or repair will occur. In addition to this, often the best way to overcome a training plateau (a stage where progress stops) the best way to overcome this is to spend a week in the gym allowing all muscles and joints to recover. After doing this, most people find that they can instantly lift more weight than a week before when they were stuck lifting a certain weight.
HIIT training seems to answer most, if not all, of the problems associated with physical training; keeps you fresh in body and mind. It fights injuries and overtraining problems and is a tremendous fat burner and a great way to increase your fitness.