Add this to your fitness toolbox - interval training

Looking for something to add to your workout routine? Try interval training. You can use it with walking, running, elliptical machines, stair stepping, swimming, biking, dancing – almost any cardiovascular exercise.

Interval training combines short, high intensity bursts of exercise with slower, recovery periods. This cycle of high and low intensity is repeated several times in one exercise session.

How do you do it?

1. Maintain a pace that you feel challenges you but does not exhaust you for a period of 1-4 minutes. On a 1-10 intensity scale, think 6. You can talk but it requires a bit of work to carry on a conversation.
2. Then for 15-60 seconds (you choose, start lower and increase as you feel comfortable), ramp up your speed to an 8 on a 10 scale. You should not be able to talk. I personally do not ever aim for a 10 as that drains my energy level quickly and I cannot keep up the intervals for as long.
3. Repeat.

Benefits:

• Fat stores are used for energy
• It burns more calories than a long, slow endurance exercise at one pace.
• It improves heart and lung functioning.
• It increases your endurance.

I love using intervals in my fitness “toolbox”. Adding this into a mix videos, classes, hill work, recumbent biking, long distance walking, rowing, lifting weights, doing body weight exercises and walking stairs helps to keep me from getting bored with any one of the activities. I also try to mix things up so that I do not repeat activities within the same week.