Top 5 Ways to Gain Fat!

Um wow. I will try very hard not to whine here, but I thought walking for a couple hours at a steady rate was a great way to lose fat. I feel like I want to die whenever I try to do intervals on the treadmill. I guess I will just have to get over it. :( I'm one of those people that is scared of working out. I'm crazy.
 
It isn't crazy, it is actually very common. A lot of people are afraid of working out and get very bothered by a rise of their own heart rate.

However I can assure you that it is not only good for you, it is safe.

Here are a couple of tips to easing your mind about working out.

1) Buy a heart rate monitor (good one) and monitor your heart rate when you start training. If you don't understand what heart rate you shouldn't go above then use this calculator to figure it out:)

Target Heart Rate Calculator

2) Start slow, but continue you push new limits. If you were using a treadmill and staying at 3.0, up it to 3.5 and then 4.0 and so forth each day until you are jogging or running! Then jog for 30 secs and walk for 1 min and go back and forth in that manner until next thing you know you are jogging more than walking!

3) Stay Hydrated! I can't stress this enough, most people feel sick after training because they lack proper hydration. Make it important to not only be hydrated properly during your workout, but before and after as well.
 
Leigh P. thanks so much. I remember watching my heart rate during my sports in high school, but for some reason I didn't store that information very well. :eek: I can honestly say I'm going to have better workouts thanks to that article Tony posted and your advice. I was on my treadmill yesterday and my heart rate monitor read 80 the whole time, and I wondered if that was good or not. NOT! I have to step it up! I'm going to try that interval program you described.
 
Well this certainly changes my thinking. Here I thought that I was doing everything all wrong and throwing my diet to waste if I went above 1200 calories.

Now I see how silly that sort of thinking is.

Hmph.

I'm going to go eat a big piece of boneless chicken now.
 
I am confused about 1 and 5.

On 1, is interval training the same as HITT, or a variation? Or is it not HITT at all, but another fancy name? Many resources say that HITT should only be done once a week.

And number 5, would "changing up your routine" mean increasing the intensity, or using difference machines / lifting techinques / cardio methods?

thx (posting 2 months after the fact :p)
 
DG, interval training and HIIT are not exactly the same, but they can cross over in a lot of areas. Typically, in interval training, you have varieties of sprints/hills, and they may or may not bring you to 95% of max HR. The rest intervals may vary. The sessions may last up to an hour.

Occasionally, there is some crossover, though, that makes the line very blurry. For example, I do one interval session that in the beginning involves 10 30 second sprints with a one minute rest in between. That part is straight HIIT, except perhaps shorter. But then the session goes on for another 40 minutes with longer intervals at a lower intensity.

Changing up your routine means all of that -- different intervals, different machines, different methods. Anything to shake your body out of doing the same thing time after time.
 
I see. For my routine, I try to do HITT once a week, and other times I do cardio, I generally keep it on the same intensity the whole time (about 30 min) (cept for warm up and cool down). Its at a high enough intensity that I get at least 60% of my maximum HR (I sweat...and its difficult for me to hold a steady convo)

Is this bad to keep it at the same intensity or should I select the "hills" and "interval" modes on the machine?

thx
 
It's not a matter of "bad" or "good". For example, if I've had a really heavy leg workout on day 1, and my legs are still sore on day 2, steady state cardio at 70% is "good" on that day. If I'm getting back to the gym after a day of rest, HIIT or heavy interval training is "good".

What has diminishing returns in doing the same thing at the same speed and resistance every time.

So yes, I would mix it up, both in terms of heart rate, and intensity.

I don't pay any attention to the stuff about doing cardio so you can carry on a conversation. I generally do cardio as hard as I can, given the circumstances and what is right for me at the time. Generally, my steady state cardio sessions are at around 80% to 85% of max hr for an hour.

I have my conversations after the session's over. :)
 
TomO said:
DG, interval training and HIIT are not exactly the same, but they can cross over in a lot of areas. Typically, in interval training, you have varieties of sprints/hills, and they may or may not bring you to 95% of max HR. The rest intervals may vary. The sessions may last up to an hour.

Occasionally, there is some crossover, though, that makes the line very blurry. For example, I do one interval session that in the beginning involves 10 30 second sprints with a one minute rest in between. That part is straight HIIT, except perhaps shorter. But then the session goes on for another 40 minutes with longer intervals at a lower intensity.
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I hate to even comment on HIIT since I caused a stink about it awhile back, but, just as an observation... I've seen this explanation alot, actually multiple times from you, and it seems awkward every time. At least from my experience, when you get into athletics, it actually pretty much is the same thing.

I ran track for 10 years or so, including a state record, and including college. I played football for 9 years. I have been racing mountain bikes for 8 years now, and have also dabbled in the road biking scene. My wife is also a very avid runner, she just got something like 121st out of about 14,000 women in the Nashville half marathon, so I hear all kinds of stuff from her as well, and her experiences in track. Between the two of us we have read all kinds of books and magazines about running, racing, biking, or whatever.

Even after all of that, except for seeing it mentioned online, actually mostly just here... I cannot remember ever hearing the term HIIT at any time in my life. Even during the present time, we talk about intervals on the bike ALL the time, yet HIIT has not come up one single time. It's simply "intervals". At least from the background that I'm from, if you're doing intervals... you can bet your ass that they're high intensity. It's just both interesting and strange to see people trying to distinguish between normal intervals and high intensity intervals. Based on my experiences it just seems like it should be the opposite if anything else, and call the slower set "low/medium intensity interval training", because that kind of efforts and intervals just don't go together. If you don't believe me, go to forums.roadbikereview.com where alot of serious road bikers go, and most of them do intervals, and do a search on HIIT. Only 3 threads come up, and even then it's just mentioned in passing like once in the thread. Compare that to this forum, 260 threads, and it's just non-stop chatter about it. It's just kind of strange.
 
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Corndoggy, I actually tend to agree with you. Before I ever heard of HIIT, I was doing interval training for cardio, and still do them more than any other form. Frankly, I was under the impression that this was "HIIT", since an average session would involve 12 to 15 sprints/hills that almost always brought be up to 95% of max HR at the end of the interval.

But, since I would write about being at 90% of max HR for up to 4 minutes at a time, people kept correcting me, and telling me that this wasn't really HIIT; it was "interval training".

OK, I accept and do the narrow definition of HIIT - i.e. a warmup period, followed by between 12 and 20 sprints, each lasting 30 seconds, each followed by 60 second rest intervals.

Is there really a difference between the interval training I did before and HIIT? Well, I guess there is in the sense that the intervals in the interval training typically last longer, and there are rest periods in between sets of intervals. But to me, that's largely a matter of semantics. I think all of this accomplishes basically the same thing -- they get your heart rate way up there, they improve your response to lactic acid buildup, they improve your cardiovascular system, and they induce EPOC.

I remember back when I played lacrosse in high school, we did wind sprints. I guess that was "HIIT". During the game itself, there were just as many sprints, and they lasted a lot longer sometimes. The wind sprints prepared you for the rigors of the game. You didn't have to worry about what it was called; you just had to worry about if you were in good enough shape to last the game in case no subs were available.

This is a long way of saying I basically agree with you -- there's a tendency to get caught up in semantics, rather than worrying about what each form of cardio really does for you.
 
Not really accurate comparing HIIT to your biking forum or your running background CD. I have been in the fitness industry for many years and it has been around that industry for a lot longer than I. I assure you, it is commonplace. Not just this forum.

However, I do agree with you, it is ALL interval training. But don't quite follow you that there is no such thing as low intensity interval training. Maybe I am misreading you though.

Just as there is low, moderate, and high intenisty steady state work, there is the same for interval training.

Am I reading you wrong, that you think all interval training is high intensity?
 
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Steve said:
Am I reading you wrong, that you think all interval training is high intensity?
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No, just that due to my background, everything that me and my buddies have ALWAYS done is high intensity. That's why it's kind of strange to me. Just an observation from a particular viewpoint, that's all, nothing more. About the only structured thing I've ever done that could be considered anything less is 400 yard intervals, we'd run a 400, then walk a 400, 8 to 10 times.
 
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corndogggy said:
No, just that due to my background, everything that me and my buddies have ALWAYS done is high intensity. That's why it's kind of strange to me. Just an observation from a particular viewpoint, that's all, nothing more. About the only structured thing I've ever done that could be considered anything less is 400 yard intervals, we'd run a 400, then walk a 400, 8 to 10 times.
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Ahh, I see where you are coming from. It is more fitness industry lingo I guess.... but certainly nothing new, and CERTAINLY not contained only in this forum.

Extreme example for you.

Interval training is something used for extremely deconditioned, obese clients. They don't have the fitness capacity to exercise for any appreciable length of time. So intervals are done. At a very low intensity. Even the higher intensity part of the interval would be considered very low intensity by most.

There are spectrums wrt any type of exercise. Intervals are certainly no exception.
 
Steve said:
Not really accurate comparing HIIT to your biking forum or your running background CD. I have been in the fitness industry for many years and it has been around that industry for a lot longer than I. I assure you, it is commonplace. Not just this forum.
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I'm sure, and obviously the ideas behind it have been around everywhere for decades, but I never hear that term. Seems like one would think that a 100 yard sprinter on a good sized college track team would have at least heard of that term before, but I haven't. That's not to say that we didn't do some of the exact same things that HIIT is all about, but the term "HIIT" was never mentioned.

Due to your explanation about extremely obese people doing very low intensity intervals... maybe the term HIIT was invented to explain the idea to the people who didn't know how to sprint? I'm not saying that in a derogatory sense... I've met lots of people who were probably physically able to, but didn't have the knowledge (or maybe willpower) to sprint. I don't know.
 
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Soooooo... doing aerobic training in the "fat burning zone" causes you to gain fat. And lifting weights while you are cutting calories causes you to gain muscle mass. I can't possibly see how this article is accurate.

I can only assume that this article is taking for granted that you suck really bad at your diet and are consuming more than you are using? It would seem to me that if your body uses 3000 calories throughout the day, including exercising, and you only consume 2500, thats a 500 deficit and no matter what you're doing you aren't going to be gaining muscle or fat.

Either that, or its specifically directed at people trying to gain muscle. In which case, its very misleading, in my opinion.
 
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kilauea said:
And lifting weights while you are cutting calories causes you to gain muscle mass. I can't possibly see how this article is accurate.

Either that, or its specifically directed at people trying to gain muscle. In which case, its very misleading, in my opinion.
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The first statement wasnt even in the article.

Everyone should be looking to increase muscle. Why would you not?
 
Lift weights and don't be afraid to push yourself beyond what you're used to;
that's how you get your body to change for the better. Every ounce of muscle you
put on will increase your metabolism and keep you in a constant fat burning state!
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That is in the article. From my understanding of the situation, if you are losing fat which...

Hold on. You say you want to lose body fat? Oh, okay, then make sure you aren't
making the mistake of following any of the above guidelines! You'd actually want
to do the exact opposite of each of the above rules to see a leaner physique in the
mirror.
For a leaner, sexier you:
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...thats what the whole article is about, then you have to cut calories back, or have a deficit of calories in order to lose fat. If you are doing this, its extremely difficult to gain muscle because in order to gain muscle you have to have a surplus of calories.

Now if they are talking about increasing lean mass % I can understand how that is possible by losing fat, as it will decrease overall body mass and the lean mass would then take up more %.
 
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