Will HIIT Help You To Build Muscle?

By Russ Howe


There is so much conflicting advice in the gym that most people find it almost impossible to learn how to build muscle effectively. One of the biggest areas of concern surrounds HIIT.

This is a form of cardiovascular activity with a major twist. Today we're going to look at this in more depth and answer the question everybody is asking. Is this a good form of exercise for muscular growth?
See the top 5 types of hiit sessions and what they are designed for.


When it comes to cardio exercise, the fact is most guys don't do enough of it. They're happy to throw around the weights three times per week but if you offer them the opportunity to jump onto a treadmill or exercise bike they'll not be anywhere near as keen.

Naturally, this behavior stems from a largely untrue stereotype that cardio is for women and weights are for men. This age old belief is something which has held countless gym members back for years and it's built upon lies.

In fact, everybody needs to do some form of cardio if they want to get fitter and stronger. No matter whether your are a man or a woman, if you wish to get leaner you should be performing some form of cardiovascular exercise alongside your resistance routine. One of the best methods is high intensity interval training.

There is a massive difference between the steady pace of regular cardio, often billed as boring, compared to that of a high intensity session. Despite being performed on the same equipment, it's a completely different style of workout.

Interval training is very simple when you get down to the finer details of it. Basically your aim is to switch from a moderate level to a high level every so often, causing your body to be unable to adapt. This will have similar effects on your muscles to a resistance workout.

The two primary energy sources we use during exercise are called aerobic and anaerobic. During regular cardio workouts we use our aerobic system. However, during both resistance training and high intensity intervals we use the anaerobic system instead.

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.




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