What is HIIT Training? Why HIIT Works? Fast Weight Loss With High Intensity Interval Training 🚴🏃

what is HIIT also known as high-intensity interval training today we're going to

talk about what it is why you want to do it who can do it and how can you do it

there's a lot of misconceptions out there so we're gonna straighten all of

them out for you coming right up

Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you'd

like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss

anything first of all what is high-intensity interval training so it's

not where you go to the gym and you workout really hard for 45 minutes even

though that feels like high intensity that is not what we're talking about

just like the name says it is intense meaning you have to get up to a super

super super high intensity so high that you cannot sustain it for more than

seconds to maybe a minute so therefore it is short very time-saving if you can

do it for 30 minutes it's not high-intensity interval training and an

interval simply means that you're varying the intensity you alternate

between high intensity and lower intensity or resting periods so why is

there all this talk about high intensity interval training because when we look

at the benefits of exercise and we understand what they truly are meaning

there are hormonal benefits there are Fitness benefits there are circulation

benefits and some people believe that burning calories is also a benefit that

you get all of these benefits in less time hormonal benefits that means that

high intensity that you make something called growth hormone and brain derived

neurotrophic factor BDNF pretty much in proportion

to how intense the exercise is so these hormones are extremely beneficial

they are muscle promoting they are brain promoting you cannot make new brain

cells or new synapses without human growth hormone and BDNF but with enough

of those and the right nutrition and circumstances you can actually make new

brain tissue so those are the hormonal benefits and high intensity again means

that you make more of these beneficial hormones in direct proportion to how

intense the exercise is that also has to do with the fitness that the Fitness is

pretty much proportional to the intensity also and you are getting

circulation benefits even though the duration is shorter and we'll talk more

about that also you can get all these benefits in much much much shorter time

than it would take to go to the gym or go to a spin class or do aerobics three

four five six days a week the next question is who can do this well pretty

much everyone however we have to make sure that we do it within the limits of

our fitness level so everyone can do it but if you have a disease if you have

pain if you are extremely unfit then you need to be aware of your situation and

you have to move forward very very carefully and very very gradually so

that your fitness level increases and so that you're not jeopardizing your health

if you have a heart condition or you have something else so if you have a a

disease then you need to consult with the doctor managing that disease before

you engage in any of this if you have pain you have to obviously accommodate

the exercises to be the ones that you can handle with that pain and if you're

unfit then you have to move forward very slowly and then how do you do HIIT

how do you do it correctly so that you get these hormonal benefits so you get

the fitness benefit and that you do it within a time frame that is short and

convenient the first thing you need to know is that it's about producing lactic

acid if you exercise if you move at a level below which you produce lactic

acid also known as aerobic then there will be none or negligible hormonal

benefits as far as growth hormone your body only makes growth hormone in

response to a challenge but it only makes extra growth hormone in response

to a challenge so this is all about challenging the body and when we talk

about lactic acid that means it's gonna hurt it's gonna burn and you need to

push yourself however the beauty is that most people

are very willing to push themselves if it's for a short time and we're talking

seconds here so you could do this on a stationary bike you could do it walking

jogging running you can do body circuits you could do burpees you could do a

rowing machine and we'll talk about some of those so the activity doesn't matter

so much but the principle is as follows so you do you start warming up and you

do a 5 to 10 minute warm-up just to get your joints ready your circulation going

your brain engaged all of that good stuff

but you want to still be in an aerobic range during the warmup meaning your

part rate is probably going to be below 120 or so and then once you start your

first interval now you go all out you hit it really hard for 20 to 60 seconds

and if it's going to be 20 or 60 kind of depends on what you're doing if you're

on a stationary bike then your legs are going to start burning really really

fast and you're probably going to tend to go into the shorter interval if you

are doing something I like to do is I'll go for a

walk or a jog on a mountain trail and then when I hit it hard I do a sprint

and I do that uphill and then I'm gonna go probably closer to 60 seconds because

I can maintain that for that period of time the shorter you do it the more

repetitions you're gonna do the longer you do it the fewer repetitions you need

to do so here's what it might look like so let's just use 30 seconds for example

then you would go all out for 30 seconds and your heart rate would start probably

somewhere around 120 and again everyone's gonna be different so you can

add or subtract a lot to these numbers just kind of know the the principles of

how they change and then you're gonna get up to 140 or so in the first 30

seconds then you give yourself a rest period and the rest period could be also

20 to 60 seconds you don't want to go a lot longer because if you go longer then

your heart rate drops too low and then you don't get the benefit of the

previous interval pushing your heart rate higher and higher and higher

so you're depending on the previous lactic acid to not go away all the way

before you start the next one and that's how you move this higher and higher why

wouldn't you just want to do one interval of three minutes well you kind

of could and that would still be beneficial but then you don't get the

benefit of each period pushing the next higher because with each resting period

by giving yourself a little bit of time your body is going to up regulate its

circulation it's going to open up the capillaries it's going to upregulate

enzymes and the whole machinery for oxygen utilization for energy production

so it works a whole lot better if you do it with intervals like this so then you

rest for about thirty seconds and now when you start

over again your heart rate might be at 130 so it's higher than it was and

because of that and because you have some lactic acid the next interval is

going to take you higher than the previous one so now you might your heart

rate might hit 150 for example then you go 30 seconds you rest 30 seconds and

now your heart rate is gonna drop but it's not gonna drop as much as it

dropped from the previous one then you hit it again

30 seconds all-out you might hit 160 and then you rest another 30 seconds and you

hit it one more time and now you might have reached your maximum heart rate so

you may or may not get another increase there typically you might get a few more

points but it again depends on your fitness level and how hard you push

yourself so the goal really is only to get you up to what your maximum heart

rate is and what is that it's different for everyone but the rough rule of thumb

is you start with a 220 and you subtract your age so I am rounded 55 years old so

my maximum heart rate should be 220 minus 55 is about 165 if I was to hit

once between 160 and 165 I would be happy I'd be done for that day later on

you can try to push it higher and see where your actual level is it might be a

little higher like I have recently gotten mine up to about 177 which is a

few beats higher than I should theoretically have but again everyone's

different so just use that as a ballpark measure and then you can repeat this

three to eight times and it all depends on how high are you getting your heart

rate how are you feeling and how fit are you so

in the beginning I would probably stop after three or four intervals especially

depending on if you're if they're longer then I would not do too many if you're

on an exercise bike and you're just going 20 seconds you could probably

start off with four or five or six even but you don't want to go more than eight

because there is no benefit you're just breaking your body down too much it's

excessive break down to go too far and this is also why you want to try to get

this done in a few minutes high interval training is not about

going 15 20 30 minutes that's not what we're talking about we're talking about

doing it in a way that you get all the hormonal benefits all the health

benefits but without causing excessive stress and without spending a lot of

time so now let's talk about a few examples so first let's say that you've

never exercised or at least not in the last 20 years that you are overweight

your insulin resistance your knees are achy sometimes that you're basically

pretty unfit hey don't beat yourself up just do something about it so if you can

walk then do some walking just start there and then you could do intervals

just walking a little faster or if you get to a hill then you could walk a

little faster uphill but if you're not very fit then you probably should aim

for maybe 70% of where you think your max is just start conservatively and

then better be safe than sorry and then a few days later you do it again and

then if everything feels good if your body recovered then you push it a little

further you still follow this pattern you're just walking walking and then you

walk a little faster and then you walk a little slower and you walk a little

faster if you're not really comfortable about walking even if you feel a little

unstable you have a stationary bike that's a

great place to be because you're not going anywhere you can hold on to

something and you can do the same type of intervals here again if you're unfit

don't push yourself too far start easy and then you can always add to it later

over time then you would work your way up to a hundred percent but I wouldn't

add maybe more than five percent per week because this is not about rushing

into something it's about developing a healthy lifestyle that you can maintain

so who cares if it takes a few months to get up to where you're getting all of

the optimal benefits if you're a little bit more fit

now you could maybe do a treadmill you if the treadmill has an incline then you

could use that for your intervals and if you're doing something like walking on a

treadmill then I would imagine and even with an incline that these intervals

would probably be closer to 60 seconds because it's gonna take you a bit longer

to get up to to the top peak heart rate and the other option might be climbing

stairs especially if you have some stairs where you could hold on to

something and maybe you don't want to walk a whole lot of stairs maybe you

just have one stair that you step up and step down while you can hold on to

something it doesn't really matter what it is as long as you're doing something

you can always progress from there so if you're medium fit then maybe you could

push yourself up to 80% I wouldn't go to a hundred again I would let that be a

goal in the next couple of months and if you are really fit highly fit then you

could do pretty much anything that's safe within the limits for you so you

could do body circuits you could do burpees jumping jacks pull-ups you could

do sprints you could do sprints on the flat which is much more demanding than

doing sprints uphill for example because doing sprints uphill

you're moving your body mass up so it is takes more energy and you can't go as

fast so it's much safer you don't have to be as fit to run uphill as you have

to be to run flat and I would never recommend anyone to sprint downhill

because that's just asking for trouble if you're already fit then I would aim

for maybe 95% of what you think your max is I would shoot for 95% in in every

workout and then you see how high you can push it over time what you'll find

especially if your fit is that it takes a lot to get your heart rate up that

high so the more you can use of your large muscles the large body parts all

at once the easier it is gonna be to get into the high range if you're really fit

it's gonna hurt a lot to get on a stationary bike because you're not using

your upper body you're using the leg muscles and you can get a significant

you can get a severe burn and still not be even close to a hundred percent so

everyone's different for me it's tough on a stationary bike to get really

really high that's why I do the sprints but try things out and realize the more

of your body that you're using so swimming sprint swimming should work

fine body's circuits work great because if you do burpees for example you're

using your entire body using pretty much every muscle in your body sprints are

the same way what about weights a lot of people ask about weights well they're

great and you can actually get virtually the same benefit as you do with maxing

out your heart rate and with maxing out on weights but to truly get the benefits

of hormones you have to raise your systemic level of growth hormone you

have to use the large muscle groups so pretty much the only one that would

count would be squats so if you can do squats safe

we may be in Iraq or if you can do them on a leg press machine and you have

strong knees and a strong low back then you can go with really heavy weights and

you can push yourself to where you miss the last rep then why does that work

because the body makes growth hormone in response to a challenge why does it make

growth hormone because it wants to build a bigger muscle so it can handle the

challenge so it can handle the abuse for next time so if you push your body to

where the body says hey you know if he's gonna do this again I have to get better

then the body is gonna make a lot of growth hormone you can still get the

same benefit as far as muscles with using smaller muscle groups like arms

but you're not going to recruit as large a volume of muscle and you're not going

to race the body systemic the total growth hormone as much but weights are

great I highly encourage it and again if you do it with high intensity then you

will have more fitness than if you're just doing lots and lots of reps and

going through the motions if you do the weights though you have to be really fit

you have to be pain free you have to use good form and all of that stuff so use

someone to help you with good form if you are not very used to that

alright so the workout itself is pretty short you could do get the whole thing

done in with warm up and warm down in 15 to 20 minutes that's a great time-saver

but how often do you need to do that because some other prominent channels

have suggested that you do it every day and that is a really bad idea and we'll

talk about that the half-life of a growth hormone when the body makes

growth hormone it does downgrade pretty fast and I had been informed earlier

that the half-life was like a couple of days but it's only about

20 to 30 minutes what does last are the secondary effects and they go on for

days so what we need to understand about growth hormone is that while you sleep

is the period where you release up to 85% of your growth hormone

so sleeping is one of the most important ways to make sure that you get your

growth hormone release but what they found in a study was that even though

the half-life of the growth hormone was only 20 to 30 minutes the people who did

HIIT they had improved growth hormone release during their sleep cycle so

growth hormone is released in sort of a pulsing wave pattern throughout the day

but especially during sleep and the HIIT didn't change the pattern but it

improved the volume so even much much later

you got additional growth hormone release if you had done HIIT the other

thing you want to understand about exercise and this is a huge huge

misconception is that exercise makes you stronger that exercise makes you feel

better this is not true exercise is a stress it breaks you down what feels

good what makes you stronger what builds muscle is when the body repairs the

damage because if you challenged if you wore the muscle down if you broke a few

fibers you release a lot of growth hormone so that you can repair the

damage that's why you want full recovery between the days that you do the

high-intensity training another prominent channel suggested that you do

full recovery between each repetition but that is not a good idea because then

you're not benefiting from the lactic acid of the previous session pushing you

higher so you don't want full recovery between each rep you

between each interval but you do want full recovery between the days that you do

this high-intensity stuff because it is very strenuous it will break down some

tissue in your body and you want to give your body the time to repair it before

you hit it again so the rule is two days complete rest that means that you do

this no more than two to three times a week if you're looking for health if

you're looking for these benefits you do two to three times a week as people get

more and more busy it's hard to find time to go to the gym and to do

something for an hour or two four five six days a week but by understanding

this you can get all the benefits of exercise the hormones the fitness and

you can condense it into something that you can do in less than thirty minutes

two to three times a week if you felt like you had some good understanding

from this video then I bet you're gonna love that one thank you so much for

watching and I'll see you next time