weight loss

Despite growing in popularity over the last ten years or so, HIIT remains an area of health and fitness still shrouded in mystery. If you are attempting to determine how to build muscle effectively this is one area you definitely need to look into.

Today we're going to be looking at this form of cardiovascular exercise and answering the all important question. Is it good for hypertrophy?

While there are certainly multiple benefits to be had from a good cardiovascular exercise plan, most people don't find cardio as interesting as weight training. This is particularly true with men, who seem far more interested in resistance workouts than hitting the treadmill or elliptical trainer.

Many individuals wrongly presume that cardio exercise is purely for weight loss, or they believe the age old misconception that treadmills are for women and weights are for guys.

Believe it or not, if your main target in the gym is to build more lean muscle then cardiovascular exercise will indeed play a huge role in your accomplishments. There are several effective forms of cardio which improve fitness and hypertrophy, most notably high intensity interval training.

That's right. Even though it's cardio, you will still be able to get bigger. This is largely because of the intensity of the work. Although you might be using a treadmill or an exercise bike, your workout isn't going to be a dull, slow paced, aerobic affair.

By constantly changing the resistance and intensity level of your gym session you will be able to challenge your body in ways it has never been pushed before. In fact, many of the benefits to this type of training have more in common with weights than they do with cardiovascular exercise.

First of all, which energy system does your body use when you are training with weights? Your anaerobic energy system. During any high intensity interval workout you'll be tapping into the exact same energy resource.

Due to the fact that our body uses the same energy system during interval training as we do for resistance workouts, we actually burn calories in the same way. You may have already heard that a resistance workout causes your body to continue burning calories at an increased rate for hours after you leave the gym. This also happens with interval training, whereas regular cardio doesn't have these 'afterburn' benefits.

Despite growing in popularity over the last few years, HIIT remains a largely unused form of cardiovascular exercise. Most gym users believe that they need to punish themselves with long, dull sessions on bikes and treadmills to lose fat and it is simply not true. If you are learning how to build muscle more effectively, this form of training will work very nicely alongside your resistance training.