In gyms around the world nowadays, HIIT is everywhere. But if you are trying to learn how to build muscle and drop unwanted body fat using this method you need to pay particular attention to one area which most gym users overlook.
The main area which needs to be looked at is pre-workout nutrition. There are many individuals who are more than prepared to go all out in the gym on a daily basis, but lack the nutritional knowledge to get the rewards their hard efforts deserve.
If you have been working out for some time already then you'll already understand how important it is to give your body the correct type of nutrients to make the most of each session you do. However, many people don't realize that high intensity training requires a slightly different tactic than regular exercise. []
Before you can work out what you should be eating prior to a high intensity interval workout you need to look at what type of food your body uses for fuel during this type of exercise because it's slightly different to regular training. While long, steady state cardio primarily burns fat stores, albeit at a very slow rate, high intensity intervals uses your carbohydrate stores for fuel.
The real benefits of this training happen after you leave the gym, where your body continues burning off calories at an increased rate for up to 14 hours. You may have heard this phenomenon called the afterburn effect. Instead of slowly chipping away at your fat stores and then ending the process when you leave the gym like regular cardio exercise, a high intensity workout depletes your carbohydrate stores first before going to work on fat stores. In doing this, your body enters a process called EPOC after your training has finished. It protects what little carb stores you have left and burns off excess fat instead. This process lasts an incredibly long time, and one calorie burnt during a high intensity session equates to around nine calories burnt during a long cardio workout.
So, the key thing we want to achieve is to help you burn through your body's excess carbohydrate stores while you are working out in the gym. For this very reason, consuming a high carbohydrate meal before a workout would make very little sense.
Does this mean you should train on an empty stomach?
Not quite. While you should look to avoid heavy carbohydrate sources before you train, you can actually increase your results if you use protein as this will work to protect your lean muscle tissue from being burnt off during an intense training. This means not only will you lose fat, you'll also hang onto and maybe even build more lean muscle tissue!
There are also many people who like using branched chain amino acids around their workouts. While this supplement is perfectly fine, there are better ways to do this. First of all, essential amino acids provide a better return than BCAA's as they include all of the amino acids which the body cannot naturally produce, rather than just the three which are more involved in building muscle. So look to replace your BCAA product with a reputable EAA supplement.
Most people who use the gym these days are familiar with protein shakes but they take them after they workout. Research reveals that you can dramatically increase your success if you also consume 15-20 grams of whey protein before you perform any high intensity activity, as well as your regular shake afterwards. This makes perfect sense because your body would naturally begin looking at your protein stores once it's carbohydrates are running low.
The topic of HIIT is as popular now as it has ever been in the past, but learning how to build muscle or lose weight with this approach often comes down to your nutrition plan surrounding those tough workouts. Now you have the key scientific research on the crucial pre-workout period, you'll be able to take your own results one step further.
The main area which needs to be looked at is pre-workout nutrition. There are many individuals who are more than prepared to go all out in the gym on a daily basis, but lack the nutritional knowledge to get the rewards their hard efforts deserve.
If you have been working out for some time already then you'll already understand how important it is to give your body the correct type of nutrients to make the most of each session you do. However, many people don't realize that high intensity training requires a slightly different tactic than regular exercise. [
See the top 5 types of hiit sessions and what they are designed for.
Before you can work out what you should be eating prior to a high intensity interval workout you need to look at what type of food your body uses for fuel during this type of exercise because it's slightly different to regular training. While long, steady state cardio primarily burns fat stores, albeit at a very slow rate, high intensity intervals uses your carbohydrate stores for fuel.
The real benefits of this training happen after you leave the gym, where your body continues burning off calories at an increased rate for up to 14 hours. You may have heard this phenomenon called the afterburn effect. Instead of slowly chipping away at your fat stores and then ending the process when you leave the gym like regular cardio exercise, a high intensity workout depletes your carbohydrate stores first before going to work on fat stores. In doing this, your body enters a process called EPOC after your training has finished. It protects what little carb stores you have left and burns off excess fat instead. This process lasts an incredibly long time, and one calorie burnt during a high intensity session equates to around nine calories burnt during a long cardio workout.
So, the key thing we want to achieve is to help you burn through your body's excess carbohydrate stores while you are working out in the gym. For this very reason, consuming a high carbohydrate meal before a workout would make very little sense.
Does this mean you should train on an empty stomach?
Not quite. While you should look to avoid heavy carbohydrate sources before you train, you can actually increase your results if you use protein as this will work to protect your lean muscle tissue from being burnt off during an intense training. This means not only will you lose fat, you'll also hang onto and maybe even build more lean muscle tissue!
There are also many people who like using branched chain amino acids around their workouts. While this supplement is perfectly fine, there are better ways to do this. First of all, essential amino acids provide a better return than BCAA's as they include all of the amino acids which the body cannot naturally produce, rather than just the three which are more involved in building muscle. So look to replace your BCAA product with a reputable EAA supplement.
Most people who use the gym these days are familiar with protein shakes but they take them after they workout. Research reveals that you can dramatically increase your success if you also consume 15-20 grams of whey protein before you perform any high intensity activity, as well as your regular shake afterwards. This makes perfect sense because your body would naturally begin looking at your protein stores once it's carbohydrates are running low.
The topic of HIIT is as popular now as it has ever been in the past, but learning how to build muscle or lose weight with this approach often comes down to your nutrition plan surrounding those tough workouts. Now you have the key scientific research on the crucial pre-workout period, you'll be able to take your own results one step further.
About the Author:
About the author: Russ Howe PTI coaches classes in the gym and online. If you'd like to know how to build muscle or need help with performing a good hiit routine, his videos will help you improve results.
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