One of the most common misconceptions about fitness is that in order to be fit and healthy you need to be sweating buckets every single day to obtain benefits like a toned physique, muscle growth, and overall well-being. But if you work smarter, you can attain all the mind, body, and soul-fulfilling benefits of exercise, without having to rearrange your entire life to fit hours of workouts in. Make your fitness routine work for you and it will work. Let’s dive into the many benefits of HIIT-style workouts.

My approach

I’m a fitness trainer that comes from a background in high-performance sports. Division 1 soccer, marathon running, triathlons. I’ve trained under the most rigorous of plans. But that’s not me anymore. I’ve taken all that I’ve learned from performance athletics and used it to create my own HIIT-style workout, BURN. Why do I say HIIT-style? Because there are no breaks. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training, implying that there are breaks between intervals of intense efforts. But in BURN instead of taking breaks, I switch the muscle group or go from strength training to cardio in 30-second bursts. I like to keep the momentum going throughout the workout. So even if a move, like burpees, feels difficult, knowing that it’s only 30 seconds allows you that little bit of comfort, because everyone knows, you can do most anything for 30 seconds. Those hard efforts are not only the secret to a shredded physique, but are also confidence-inspiring, which is much more than you can say about the average workout.

Time efficiency

People are busy and want to be fit without fitness being their entire life. That is nearly a universal desire. What if I told you HIIT workouts are the answer? Because it’s true… HIIT-style workouts are the most time-efficient way to get fit. Most HIIT workouts are intense and have you sweating quickly and consistently in 30 minutes or less. Despite the short amount of time they require, they demand a lot from the body and not only burn a significant amount of calories during the workout, but keep the metabolism elevated and continue to burn calories for hours after the workout.

Full-body shred

When approaching a new fitness routine, many people ask themselves, “Should I be doing cardio or strength training?” The answer is both. They both have enormous health benefits and HIIT workouts strike that balance without you having to pay attention to how many training sessions you’re doing of each. HIIT workouts not only raise the heart rate as cardio does, but also strengthen the muscles with complex moves like burpees, planks, shuffles, and more. They meet that perfect sweet spot between cardio and strength so you can experience the benefits of both. Also, it’s worth mentioning that with all the different workout routines I have done over course of my life HIIT-style is the one that has kept me healthy and injury-free because it hits (pun intended) the whole body and therefore balances out the muscle strain evenly avoiding overtaxing one muscle group. I can’t say that about my time as a marathon runner!

The bottom line

There is a lot more science to the benefits of HIIT workouts, but I am not a scientist. I speak from experience. My experience is that HIIT workouts have dramatically improved my fitness and my quality of life by allowing me to attain all the benefits of a hard workout plan, but have all the time to do the various other things I want to do in life. I encourage everyone to try a HIIT workout and see for themselves what it does for their life and fitness.