THIS IS A TEST. This post was copied from https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/1/10/18148463/high-intensity-interval-training-hiit-orangetheory
Modern life has a way of making us feel time-crunched and pressured to find the most efficient ways of using the precious hours when we’re not sleeping. The trendy fitness regimen high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, epitomizes this feeling.
HIIT promises the best workout in the least amount of time. Runners have used interval training for more than 100 years, alternating between sprints and jogging to improve their endurance. But HIIT didn’t really go mainstream until about a decade ago, when exercise physiologists started to come out with study after study demonstrating that intervals could deliver the biggest health improvement for your exercise time. In 2013, the seven-minute workout, popularized by the New York Times, appeared on the scene, and by 2016, the one-minute workout.
Recently, fitness professionals voted HIIT one of the top fitness trends for 2020 in a survey by the American College of Sports Medicine. And interval-based workouts are now popping up seemingly everywhere: at chains like Shred415 and Orangetheory, in group classes at YMCAs, on apps and YouTube, even in the routines outlined in Oprah’s O magazine. Often they promise to burn fat and “metabolically charge the body,” as Orangetheory puts it, in a short time period.
But there are some important nuances scientists have learned about HIIT that have gotten lost in the hype. The proven benefits of these workouts relate to a very particular type of interval training, and they’ve got nothing to do with weight loss. Here are six basic questions about HIIT, answered.
First things first: What is HIIT?
HIIT workouts generally combine short bursts of intense exercise with periods of rest or lower-intensity exercise. At fitness studios and online, these workouts often mix aerobic and resistance training.
To be clear, most of the interval workouts researchers have studied focus solely on aerobic exercise. Which means the scientific understanding of interval training is based on a more specific routine than what’s appearing in most gyms, videos, and magazines. And the researchers’ definition matters because when we’re talking about the evidence of benefits, we need to be specific about the kinds of workouts that science was based on.
END OF TEST.