You know that you can burn a lot of calories with a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout. Do you also know about the afterburn effect, HIIT workouts will burn even more calories after your workout?
What is the Afterburn Effect?
Afterburn Effect the post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) process your body uses to replenish adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Afterburn effect HIIT workouts quickly burn the ATP in your muscles and your body is required to replenish all of the ATP post-post workouts. Your body must use energy to make ATP and that is how you burn more calories after your workout.
How Many More Calories Can You Afterburn?
The short answer is you can burn nearly another 50% more calories using an afterburn effect HIIT workout. Studies published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (MSSE) showed that if you perform high-intensity exercises for 45 minutes, you can burn about 420 calories during your workout. However, you can also burn an additional 190 calories over the next 14 hours (1).
Get Your High-Intensity Workout with Any Type of Exercise
High-intensity exercise isn’t as intimidating as it might sound. You can get a high-intensity workout in just 20 minutes with interval cardio or the more advanced Peak 8 exercises. You can use any type of exercise for your high-intensity workouts, such as jogging, biking, walking, or an elliptical machine. Here are some HIIT Training Examples and How You Get Lean Fast Using Them.
Your High-Intensity Exercise Routine
You have many options for your high-intensity exercise routine, but one of the best workouts you can do is an interval cardio workout on a treadmill. Alternatively, you can try Dr. Mercola’s Peak 8 exercise, which you can do with or without exercise equipment.
Lern more about the Peak Fitness program.
Your Interval Cardio Workout Guide
To perform your high-intensity interval cardio workout, you’ll need to start by warming up. Then, do a 60-second power walk, followed by a 30-second jog, and then a 15-second sprint. At the end of your 15-second sprint, hop onto the side rails, keeping hold of the handlebars. Reduce the treadmill speed to your baseline. Let the tread slow down for a few seconds and then start walking again at this slower speed. Be sure you bring the incline down to 0 for this recovery phase.
Now it’s time to challenge yourself and increase the intensity.
How to Increase the Intensity
You should do 4 to 8 of these high-intensity exercises for a complete workout.
- For your first challenge, increase the speed of your 60-second power walk to 0.5 mph higher than your baseline. Then increase the incline to 1.5 if you’re a beginner, 2.5 for intermediate, or 3.5 for advanced. On each progressive challenge, increase your speed by 0.1 mph and the incline by 0.5 degrees for your 60-second power walk.
- At the 60 second mark, break into a traditional jog, and then increase your speed to 2.0 mph faster than your baseline. For each consecutive exercise, increase your speed by 0.2 mph for your 30-second jog.
- You should keep your sprint speed the same throughout your workout. Simply intensify your technique with high knees.
Each of these high-intensity exercise repetitions will get incrementally more challenging than the one before. Therefore, you must make sure you give yourself enough time to recover between each exercise.
Allow Plenty of Recovery Time
In between each high-intensity challenge, keep walking at a nice, slow pace to help you recover. The length of each high-intensity challenge stays constant throughout your workout. However, your rest periods will get longer as each progressive high-intensity exercise gets more intense.
It’s better to take longer rests than shorter. In order to get a successful high-intensity workout, you need to keep up the intensity during each challenge. That’s why it’s so important that you recover as much as possible between each repetition. Before you start your next high-intensity exercise challenge, make sure that:
- you’ve recovered your breath
- your energy level is a 9 out of 10
- you feel strong and ready for the next repetition, which will be slightly more challenging
How to Lose Weight and Burn Fat Using Afterburn Effect HIIT
Your Guide to Afterburn Effect HIIT Peak 8 Fitness
If you want an even more intense workout, you can try Peak 8 Fitness high-intensity exercise. You can use any type of exercise for your Peak 8 workout. Although you’ll have a greater variety of options if you can access a gym or exercise equipment, you don’t need either. You can get the same results from your Peak 8 Fitness high-intensity workout by walking or running on flat ground.
Because Peak 8 is more intense than an interval cardio workout, you’ll need to start slow and work your way up. Be mindful of your fitness level and don’t overdo it. Ultimately, you want to exercise vigorously enough that you reach your anaerobic threshold, which causes your body to release human growth hormones.
Your Afterburn Effect HIIT Peak 8 Workout
One great perk of Peak 8 exercises is that you can do it in even less time than your high-intensity interval cardio workout. Peak 8 is essentially a more intense version of interval cardio, so you can get the same results by sprinting for only 4 minutes!
Here’s a high-intensity Peak 8 workout routine that you can do with a recumbent bike:
- First, warm up for 3 minutes.
- Then push yourself as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You should feel like you can’t possibly continue.
- Recover for 90 seconds.
- Repeat this high-intensity exercise and recovery routine 7 more times.
How to Get the Best Afterburn Effect from Your Peak 8 Workout
To get the most out of your Peak 8 workout, you should make sure that you reach these markers by the end of your 30-second high-intensity exercise period:
- You’ll find it relatively hard to breathe and talk because you’re in oxygen debt.
- You’ll start to sweat profusely. This typically occurs during your second or third repetition.
- Your body temperature will rise.
- You’ll feel a burn in your muscles as lactic acid levels increase.
You should perform your Peak 8 high-intensity workout no more than 3 times a week. If you do Peak 8 more frequently than that, you may actually do more harm than good. As your fitness level improves, you can reduce the frequency of your high-intensity workouts. You shouldn’t decrease the intensity, though. If you decrease the intensity of your workouts, then you’ll lose the benefits.
Benefits of Your High-Intensity Workout
If you regularly perform high-intensity exercise, you’ll enjoy some great benefits. Your high-intensity workout will:
- decrease your body fat
- improve your muscle tone
- give you firmer skin and reduce wrinkles
- increase your energy levels and sex drive
- improve your athletic speed and performance
- slow down your aging process and telomere shortening
- decrease your risk of chronic disease and disability
- keep you fit, trim, agile, mobile, and happy
High-intensity exercise is a great way to maximize these benefits and reach your personal fitness goals. For more information on HIIT Training check out these articles.
