Interval running?

[rose2boys]

Cathe or educated crowd: Do you know anything about the effectiveness of interval running? A friend told me about this; you do a few minutes of warm up walk, then you alternate between walking for 2 min. & all out sprinting as fast as you can for 30 seconds for a total of 20 min., then 2-5 min. walking cooldown.

I did it today for the first time - it's actually alot harder than it sounds &
I love the time efficiency, but I'm skeptical because it seems so short...


rose2boys

Keep smiling & sweating!

 

[rose2boys]

Cathe or educated crowd: Do you know anything about the effectiveness of interval running? A friend told me about this; you do a few minutes of warm up walk, then you alternate between walking for 2 min. & all out sprinting as fast as you can for 30 seconds for a total of 20 min., then 2-5 min. walking cooldown.

I did it today for the first time - it's actually alot harder than it sounds &
I love the time efficiency, but I'm skeptical because it seems so short...


rose2boys

Keep smiling & sweating!

 

[zellybelly]

This is the advice I got from my friend who is a personal trainer...

TRAIN SMARTER, NOT HARDER!!!

Try interval training...3x/wk. Your body needs to be shocked! Do something crazy and kick your butt for 30-45 min as hard as you can during the high intervals, then recover slightly on the program and then kick it up again.

Interval train at 80% of heart rate reserve, (HRR) which will kick your butt, so, to start let's get a goal of maximizing calorie and fat burning utilization at a realistic level = 70% of heart rate reserve or about 75% of maximum heart rate, for a faily fit person... the interval training will have your heart rate and metabolism higher for a longer period of time AFTER EXERCISE than a slow steady fat burning run.

 

[maddiesmum]

Interval running or interval anything is excellent stuff. I do it all the time. I use it as the way to get me back into shape and ease me back into running longer distances. I gradually increase the total time spent running so that it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or whatever mins running and 2 mins fast walk recovery. But here, my goal is to increase my distance. I also do what you suggest for my final few intervals and just go all out on the speed, or increase the speed of each successive minute. So I run for 6 mins starting at 7.2 mph, then increase to 7.3 for the next minute, then 7.4, etc and so on. For each successive interval, I start the beginning speed at a higher level, so the next interval starts at 7.3 mph and ends with 7.8 mph. I will end up with all out sprints by the end and I am usually at this (the total workout, where first half is steady state speed intervals around 6.8-7.2 mph and second half is increasing speed sprint intervals 7.3-8 mph) for about 7-8 miles.

Done three times per week, it's an excellent workout, burns close to 1000 calories and does fab things for the cardio endurance and legs.

Clare