Summer is drawing to a close soon and what better time to focus on your outdoor training. The early AMs and nights are balmy, daylight savings is still in play, and the best thing is that the temperature is a lot more forgiving than the blistering heat of Jan and Feb. Outdoor exercise is one of the most rewarding types of training you can do, it gets you out in the fresh air and tops up your vitamin D levels, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a run around in the sun! There are a whole host of training activities you can do outdoors, ranging from boxing, to kettle bells to Yoga in the park, but one of the more popular types at the moment in HIIT – otherwise known as High Intensity Interval Training. HIIT involves training at high intensity for a certain amount of time (e.g. 20 seconds) and following it up with a rest period (e.g. 10 seconds) for a number of intervals.
HIIT has started to dominate the outdoor scene as a cost effective and results driven training mode, that is not only fun but super easy to facilitate. You can get away with using just yourself and your body weight, plus the lush outdoor surroundings. Some major reasons we’ve seen HIIT take off recently as are follows:
- It’s time efficient
You can smash out a really solid workout in as little as 12minutes, heart will be pumping, you’ll be sweating up a storm. HIIT training is great when you are limited with space or time and need that quick burst to get things churning over
- You’ll burn more fat
HIIT Training is not only a hard workout while you are training, but due to the intense nature of the session, you’ll continue to zap your fat post session, we’re talking up to 24 hours after training – WINNING
- You’ll boost your metabolism
Training at high intensity intervals such as you do with HIIT encourages you to maintain muscle and still lose fat, it’s this maintenance of muscle that drives your metabolism and makes you re a fat burning machine
- You don’t need any equipment
As mentioned before, just your body weight will do – using a variety of compound movements we are able to get a full body workout that covers abs, legs, arms and of course, the heart and the lungs
So give some HIIT a try this Autumn – here is a basic HIIT session (30min workout) that you can do in the park, your back yard or even your lounge room for the non-nature lovers!
Mountain Climbs (20 sec on, 10 sec off) X8 then 1min rest
Squat Jumps (20 sec on, 10 sec off) X8 then 1 min rest
Push Ups (20 sec on, 10 sec off) X8 then 1 min rest
Sit Ups (20 sec on, 10 sec off) X8 then 1 min rest
Dips (20 sec on, 10 sec off) X8 then 1 min rest
Burpees (20 sec on, 10 sec off) X8…………………….FINISH
Happy training!