How Many Times a Week Should I Burst Train?

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Chicago, IL how many times a week should I Burst Train? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Safina Kozer from Facebook asks, I want to start burst training. How many times a week should this be done to be effective? All right, this is a great question. You know I'm a big fan of burst training. I say burst to blast fat. So I'll be right back to explain the optimal time and also a little bit more about how to do it. So stay with me.

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You to suspicious texts, emails and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com Online Protection all right, burst training, aka High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT training. What the heck is it? Let's deconstruct it first and I'm going to give you the prescription, the best dosing. Because remember, exercise can be therapeutic or destructive. It all depends on the dose. And that's where burst training really comes into play. Because, you know, if you do a lot of long slow distance cardio training like jogging, it can really get destructive. It can raise cortisol, it can lower your immune system, it can break down muscle, it can create a lot of oxygen oxidative stress. And just the opposite happens when you're doing high intensity interval training. It can support a better immune system. It can help your body handle stress better, it can help you burn fat better. It creates bigger metabolic cost that actually takes longer for your body to recover from. So, and the best part of all is it takes a whole lot less time. Because here's what it is. It's burst training. You do little bursts of exercise and actually the research is starting to shift even more. I used to say you do 20 to 60 second bursts and then recover for twice as long and Repeat to accumulate four to eight total minutes of bursting. However, now it's even 10 seconds. So my new recommendations are 10 to 30 seconds all out, hard as you can, and then twice as long to recover and repeat. And you're mixing it up. And here's the thing, the fitter you are, the faster you recover. In fact, that is one of the key ways to tell how fit you are is how quickly your heart rate comes back down, how quickly you start to recover with your breathing. But when you're doing multiple bouts of high intensity interval training, you're going to see that it starts to get more and more difficult to recover because your lactic acid's getting tougher to buffer back down and you're creating a bigger and bigger oxygen debt. So how on earth do you burst train, you ask? I'm glad you did so what you really want to do here is get as many body parts as possible, as many big muscles moving as possible. And you really want to do this so that you know that feeling when you were a kid and maybe someone was chasing you in the schoolyard and you were chasing someone else, and your thighs were burning and your lungs were burning, that's how you want to feel. You want to get uncomfortable. By the way, change doesn't happen in your comfort zone, so you got to push out, but it's just for a little bit so you can do it. So how could you do that? Well, you could do that on a bike. You could do that stepping up and down. You could do that running up a set of stairs. You could do that on the X Scisor. You could do that on StairMaster or a step mill. You can do that going out and sprinting, you can do that doing burpees. You can do it with a jump rope. You can do it with Turkish getups. You can do it jumping up and down in the pool with water for resistance. I think you're getting the idea. Anything that moves as many muscles as possible, really get your arms and legs pumping. So your heart's pumping and your lungs are going for 10 to 30 seconds all out. And then you're going to recover for twice as long and hit it again back and forth, back and forth, until you've accumulated four to eight total minutes of bursts. And you're going to want to do this every other day. So I like to say three days a week for burst training, every other day. And sometimes I'll put this together. I'll do some burst training, and then I'll also do a big leg workout. So I've got workouts divided into four things. The first one is just flat out moving more. I will tell you, I do not consider this to be exercise. For me, for something to count as exercise, you need to get hot, sweaty, and it should hurt a bit. So walking your dog, I'm not getting hot or sweaty and nothing's hurting. So you want to move more, and you just want to move more as much as possible throughout the day. It all counts, but it doesn't count as exercise. So that's step one. And if you're having trouble moving more, get yourself a device to be able to track it, like an Oura ring, a Fitbit, an apple watch. And then get yourself a very needy dog with big eyes who will stare at you so that you have to take that doggie out a couple times a day so that's the first thing. Second thing, start that HIIT training and start with four minutes. And here's the thing, it doesn't get easier. I know how unfair, right? You get stronger. As you get stronger, go harder and change it up because your body's built to adapt to what you're doing. So I've got an exciser, I've got a StairMaster, I've got a peloton, I've got a step bench that I can step up and down on and then I've also got stairs in my house. So I've got a lot of stuff that I can do to do my burst training and I'm always mixing that up. Then once you've got that dialed in three days a week, alternating days, add in some resistance training. And I divided the body. This is all in my core four exercise program, my fast fitness program, into four different parts. And I like to hit each of those body parts at least twice a week. And then the final thing is to do some flexibility, like some yoga a couple times a week as well. And again, these things don't have to take a long time. You can do that HIIT training. Gosh, you know, 12 minutes, you can do your resistance training. 30 minutes, you could do that flexibility training. 30 minutes. So as you can see, this is just what you fit into your life because you're making you a priority. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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