Is HIIT More Effective For Fat Loss Or Building Lean Muscle?

By Russ Hollywood

With high intensity interval training becoming one of the hot trends of the last few years in the fitness industry there is one burning question which most gym enthusiasts want to ask - can you build muscle and maintain it with HIIT?

The old approach, of course, is to do a resistance session and then jump on a bike for some light cardiovascular work to get yourself into the so-called 'fat burning zone'. []

If you are trying to gain size you can get fooled into believing you only need to work hard on the weights, or that cardio work is dull and boring.
However, recent studies show that muscle gains were massively increased thanks to the incorporation of HIIT into weekly resistance workouts in place of dull, regular cardiovascular activity.

If you are one of the many people who finds their cardiovascular activity to be somewhat dull and repetitive, the discovery that HIIT can burn significantly more fat while also retaining lean muscle in a superior way to regular cardio should ring like a church bell. This is the news you have been waiting for, after all. Finally, you don't have to sit on the bike for an hour five times per week!

It would be foolish to jump straight in, of course, without taking a few minutes to learn some of the basic principles which HIIT operates around. People often buy into opinions in the fitness world, rather than stone cold facts. They follow the advice of their friend purely because he's in shape, despite the fact that the advice offered little or zero scientific support. This is why so many people don't get results in the gym. For instance, most people do their cardio work after they hit the weights. Based on recent studies, not only should you be doing HIIT you should also be doing it before you hit the weights.

The study which discovered this information was actually completed back in 2001, but was under-reported in the media at the time. As a result it has gone largely unnoticed by the general population and most fitness instructors, who still follow the old belief that doing cardio work before a weights workout will fatigue the muscles.

One of the worst mistakes made with HIIT is the temptation to overdo it. Suddenly you have this wonderful fat loss tool in your hands and you will want to use it all the time. It's only beneficial when you are at your full ability, so try to limit your HIIT workouts to no more than four days of the week on average.

If you have been trying to learn how to build muscle in the gym but were perhaps unsure of high intensity interval training due to the fat loss stigma which is attached to it, you need not worry. HIIT has been proven to retain lean muscle mass in a far superior way to regular cardiovascular activity, allowing you to slot it into your program and get the best of both worlds.

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Further Assistance - Uncover the facts behind high intensity interval training as strength coach Russ Howe PTI explains to you how to build muscle using the most scientifically backed methods, all for free via his fitness blog.