The Science Behind Building Lean Muscle With HIIT Workouts

By Russell Howe

Every fitness trainer is constantly looking for new, improved methods teaching how to build muscle. One of the theories which the last decade has embraced is high intensity interval training and today you'll discover what it can do for your muscle building goals.

Using HIIT as a form of resistance training may sound impossible, but it's not.

HIIT is very versatile. In the past few years it has been stereotyped as a cardiovascular workout, but in truth it can be applied to strength based training quite easily, too.

The earliest reports on this training protocol heavily featured resistance training, believe it or not. Coaches would often get their athletes to perform at nearly maximum intensity while in the gym to enhance their ability on the track. The fitness benefits are proven.

When you think about it, any weights workout bears striking resemblances to interval training. You train, you rest, you train, you rest, and so on.

Most people who are using intervals for fat loss results are doing so because they are chasing the fabled afterburn effect. This is the post workout recovery phase which follows an interval based workout, where the body can continue to burn calories and fat for a number of hours on autopilot.

Despite taking less time, interval based routines have been shown in various scientific research papers to burn off considerably more calories and body fat than straightforward aerobic activity.

There are two problems which prevent most gym users from seeing these results.

Most people allow themselves to get stuck in a comfort zone when lifting. They fail to force new results by handling loads their body can already take. Also, they rest for way too long.

Failing to take care of those two problems will see any workout routine fall flat on it's own face. That's because the foundation of HIIT is low rest and maximum workloads.

So to incorporate this technique into resistance training, do the following...

Eliminate unnecessary rest. You shouldn't need more than sixty seconds to recover from a set. You can do this by using the stopwatch feature on your mobile phone, rather than using it to text your friends between sets. This will massively increase your workout's productivity, burning more fat as well.

By increasing the workloads and decreasing rest periods, you will notice how much fitter you feel within just a few sessions.

Thanks to scientific research, high intensity interval training has now been proven as one of the best methods for fat loss and hypertrophy. If you want to see how to build muscle with this technique, implement it in to your routine immediately.