The more I do intervals the more I love them . Some where along the way we were lead to believe that exercise had to be done for a really long time. We also were made to believe that if we didn’t feel exhausted after a workout that we didn’t work hard enough and we won’t see results.
I say that’s nonsense. I can gain a whole lot of endurance from just doing a couple of sets of 5 reps of squat thrusts. I believe that you can build strength with just one set.
Intervals allow u to work hard for a short period of time and then repeat it again. Intervals are how we actually live day to day. Think about, everything we do during the day is done in a work, rest, work, rest fashion. Even walking.
Yes, walking is an interval workout for the legs. When your weight is on one foot the other leg gets a quick rest. One legs particular muscles does work, and the it rests until the next step lands on that leg.
When u pick up groceries from the car, you carry them into the house(work) and then you put them down. You then go back to the car and get the rest of the bags (rest).
You walk to the kitchen to get something to eat. The walking is work, and when you get back to the couch, you rest. Also to stand up you had to do a squat. If you count how many times u get up, walk and then sit back down, those are intervals.
As you can see there is always a work/ rest situation going on.
How to work intervals into your routine
In order to add intervals into your workout all you need to do is incorporate the work/rest scenario. Let’s take an exercise like jumping jacks. Instead of doing 50 jumping jacks, do 20.
Then rest 30 seconds and do another 30 jump jacks. And let’s rest 30 seconds and do 20 more. Now you’ve done 60 total jumping jacks, where before you would’ve only made it 50.
Pretty soon, you’ll be able to do another set of 20, making the total eighty. After that, try doing one all out set again and I bet you’ll be able to do more that 50 straight jumping jacks.
Intervals in weight training
You may have noticed that when doing multiple reps and sets with any kind of weight training, that you are already doing intervals. When you take a weight and then do 5 reps with it, then rest for one minute before doing another rep, that’s an interval.
It incorporates the work/rest scenario. So you really don’t need to change that. What you can play around with is the number of reps, sets and rest periods in your workout.
Changing those will work your muscles differently.
Intervals are one of the ways that the military uses to get their soldiers fit in bootcamp. To learn more techniques that the military uses, keep an eye out for my new eguide: Secrets of Military Fitness, techniques the military uses to get its members ship shape.
It will be launching soon, and will be available in the Amazon Kindle store.
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photo credit: stairs
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