let's discuss the difference between hiit high intensity interval training versus cardio
for your heart which one is better and the answer is high intensity interval training
now you think high intensity exercise would be more harmful to the heart than a lower type
longer sustained exercise but it's not and that has to do with what's happening in a heartbeat
okay in a heartbeat you have this contraction and relaxation okay this wave form contraction
relaxation and so the heart operates on a rhythm okay and so high intensity interval training
mimics more of a rhythmic type exercise than some type of moderate sustained type exercise
where you're jogging for a period of time or doing any type of marathons
that's actually much harder on the heart and so short duration high intensity exercise
with a good amount of rest is very very therapeutic to the heart there's a study that
i'm going to put a link down below that showed that hiit exercise showed significant increase in
cardiovascular and respiratory health so you can do the spin bike okay you can do the slam ball
right now i'm doing the slam ball there's this really heavy rubber ball it's like 30 pounds and
you lift it from the ground up and you slam it down man that gives you an intense workout and
i could probably only do that maybe 12 to 15 times and i i just you hit a max where you just can't go
anymore so you get this huge spike in pulse rate so then you stop what you're doing let the pulse
rate come down to a good level and then do it again okay but you only need to do it like between
i don't know three to seven cycles and that's it of course the key is the rest and i'm going
to talk about that a little bit then you have something called plyometrics which you're hopping
on like a platform back and forth that will give you a really good high intensity interval
training workout there's many other things you can do you don't even need equipment sprinting
is another really good one but of course you need good joints for that and if you're like 80 years
old and you have arthritis not a good option but if you're younger and you can do sprint training
it's probably one of the best exercise because it's so intense and you're working every single
muscle in your body in a very short duration i mean just take a look at these sprinters that
sprint for 100 yards right in like i mean 10 11 12 seconds i mean that's that's a short workout
but that's intense you do several of those with a good amount of rest in between you're going
to create some serious improvements in your health the other thing they noted in the study is that it
was safe for people with high blood pressure and even with people who had heart problems of course
check with your doctor before doing this but it's safer than you think especially if you're giving
your heart a good amount of rest the other thing that high intensity interval training will do
is it'll increase something called vo2 max and this is the amount of oxygen that
feeds the muscles okay so it'll actually help you with that and it will increase growth hormone
as well as testosterone two very important hormones especially as we age so we're dealing
with like three variables we're dealing with the intensity of exercise we're dealing with
their duration and we're dealing with the recovery with hit training we want a high intensity okay
we want short duration okay because the longer duration the more you're going to increase
cortisol which is not good it's going to have more stress and then we want a good amount of recovery
so we create this short-term stress we create less cortisol improve recovery we improve the
parasympathetic nervous system now what happens when we spike our pulse rate high we have a part
of the nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system that is raising our pulse rate
up to a certain peak right and as soon as we stop exercising the pulse rate should come
down now what's responsible for the pulse rate coming down is the parasympathetic nervous system
the parasympathetic nervous system is all about recovery and it's an active wave like mechanism
that's literally pushing down your pulse rate actively and in practice i had a machine that
measured that it used something called heart rate variability technology and it measured part of
the autonomic nervous system and after a minute exercise you can actually see how long it takes
for someone to recover and if they had a weak parasympathetic nervous system it would take a
very long period of time to recover if they had a strong parasympathetic nervous system
they can recover really quick so based on your recovery you can kind of tell what's happening
inside to that part of the nervous system and so by doing this exercise you can actually strengthen
your parasympathetic nervous system by allowing it to recover fully so what i would recommend is do
like a 20 second or even a less intense workout and then rest for about two to four minutes
to allow that pulse rate to come all the way down and then do it again
and again and again like three to seven sets and that's all you need to do i highly recommend this
workout add it to what you're already doing and i think you're gonna really see some amazing changes
not just with your heart for your whole body hey before you go if you're benefiting from any of my
content i would love to hear about your success story please share it in the link down below