Transform Your Body in Just 4 Minutes a Day (No Kidding)
There is much buzz in the health and fitness world, following the publicity of the latest research, which shows that yes, your body can be transformed by doing a workout for just 4 minutes a day.
Many busy people are very excited about this news, and no longer have an excuse for not squeezing in a bit of a workout into their lives!
Whilst our personal trainers and physiotherapists at Apex Clinic in Belfast are dedicated to curing or preventing pain, we also care a lot about general health and fitness, and enjoy being right up to date with the latest research and techniques. The 4 minute workout is also known as High Intensity Interval Training or HIIT.
What is High Intensity Interval Training?
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) describes any workout that alternates between intense bursts of activity and fixed periods of less-intense activity or even complete rest.
Not only do you burn more calories during HIIT workouts, but the effect of all that intense exertion kicks your body’s repair cycle into hyperdrive. That means you burn more fat and calories in the 10 hours after a HIIT workout than you do after, say, a steady-pace run.
‘’All you need to do is really go for it for 4 minutes a day – that’s your workout done,’’ says fitness guru Lucy Wyndham-Read of LWR Fitness, who created the Fast Fat Burning Method. “It must be done five days a week, and you’ll see and feel the results within a fortnight. You’ll also feel incredibly energised”. The four minute workout uses a combination of high impact exercise and active recovery to get your heart racing and burn a ton of calories - and all in less time than it takes to drag yourself out of bed in the morning!
The 4 minutes of exercise must be made up of 20 seconds of very intense work, followed immediately by 10 seconds of marching on the spot which is the active recovery period. Then repeat this eight times. The intense work could be running on the spot as fast as possible, star jumps or jumping on the spot. Any exercise that gets your heart rate up and targets the big muscle groups.
It's not as easy as it sounds! Four minutes of HIIT is intense and gets your heart racing! By targeting different and specific areas of the body you push your body to its limits, (more so than a 30 minute steady pace workout on the cross-trainer will ever do). And let's face it, it's a lot easier to wake up five minutes earlier than usual and jump about in your PJs than to drag yourself up at 5am to face the gym before work!
The physios and personal trainers at Apex Clinic highly recommend this work out to get a super-toned, summer body fast. Those “no time to exercise” excuses just aren’t going to work anymore!
Apex Clinic, Belfast
5 - 11 Summerhill Avenue, Stormont, Belfast, BT5 7HD
Tel: 028 9048 4153
Fax: 028 9048 7218
info@apexclinic.co.uk
www.apexclinic.co.uk
16/08/2012