by Jared Conley

I bet you’ve heard it repeatedly: you can’t build muscle up and burn fat at the same time. They say that building mass involves an increase in calories, while fat burning involves a decrease in calories. This old school wisdom is based partially in fact, but the concepts are being tossed on their ears with insights into interval-based workouts. The fact is, you can accomplish muscle weight gain at the same time as you burn fat if you add intervals to your workouts.

Interval training isn’t new, but it’s more widely understood, accepted, and implemented in recent years. While standard cardiovascular training were looked at as the only efficient ways to shed fat, and the only effective workouts for endurance athletes, high intensity interval training (HIIT) has been shown to be advantageous to athletes in all sports, and for people with wildly varying goals.

Traditional cardio activity is referred to as “steady state,” which means that you build up to a fixed intensity level and continue working out at that level for the duration of the training session. During the session, your body gains half of its energy through your fat stores, and gets the remainder through oxygen intake, and by cutting into your muscle and glycogen stores.

HIIT sessions, conversely, consist of short high intensity intervals followed by moderate intensity recovery periods. HIIT sessions spare your muscles and are quick, but are killer. A fifteen-minute HIIT workout can raise your resting metabolic rate for a full 24 hours, enabling you to continue burning higher levels of fat for up to a day.

On top of this, because your muscles burn calories during every minute of the day, the more lean mass you have, the more fat you burn, even while you’re sitting still. Because HIIT not only spares your muscle, but also helps you build muscle up, your future fat burning capacity is increased.

The bottom line is that regardless of your fitness goals, HIIT sessions can help you increase your overall fitness level with very short sessions. Better still, if your goals include muscle building and fat burning, adding HIIT to your workout schedule is a no-brainer.

About the Author:
Jared is a time-strapped professional who is always on the lookout for techniques to get better results in less time. Over the years, he has reviewed most of the popular build muscle up products available on the market. His objective product reviews and informative content are freely available to anyone looking to exercise, build muscle and strengthen their bodies.