What is HIT

Not many people are aware of the fact that strength/resistance training is a key factor in helping you lose body fat; and obviously losing body fat makes you look great and is a goal most of us have when training. This is where H.I.T. comes in. It’s the perfect system for anyone with a busy life. And that’s most of us! Because it’s short sharp training in a short space of time!

This training system is for both men and women. The human body adapts the same way to training stress whether you’re male or female.  The main differences between the sexes are hormonal!

With H.I.T. there is less force applied to the joints as the intensity increases, whereas high force exercise like repetitive cardiovascular training such as running and cycling for long periods, increases the forces on your joints. 

Ladies need not worry about gaining lots of muscle as they can’t gain as much muscle as men due to having 25-50 times less testosterone than men, the main muscle building hormone, and having more oestrogen!

Here is an important paragraph for women.

This is a statement that women never hear:

A woman should try to gain as much muscle as they can.

But before you say ‘this is not what I want at all’ and move to get off the site as soon as possible, please realise that this will not be ‘huge body builder’ muscle. The only way a woman can ever have a muscular physique like a man is to take anabolic steroids. And ultimately women don’t have the same amount of muscle fibre type as men anyway. Consequently women cannot gain muscle like men because, as I have stated, they have less testosterone. With H.I.T. women will gain lean muscle. This lean muscle will help them lose body fat more easily, making them stronger, and more functional in everyday tasks, decreasing the risk of injury, decreasing the risk of osteoporosis and will ultimately make them look great!  Toning really means a loss in body fat. How do you achieve this? Take a careful look at your diet. What you do in the gym to promote fat loss does not even come close to what you can do in the kitchen to achieve the same results. Try cutting out sugar, processed carbohydrates, and pre-made/packaged foods for a few weeks. You’ll be amazed at the amount of ‘toning that occurs.   Here’s an interesting point: Every pound of muscle burns an extra 35-50 calories a day, which will obviously increase your metabolism! Metabolism is the number of calories you burn to keep your main organs working and basically, keep you alive everyday. Muscles are the engines of our bodies as they make us stand, walk, run and sit.

Here is a paragraph for men:

Your metabolism is as stimulated by H.I.T. except you get bigger…(more muscular). You achieve your weight loss goals exactly the same.

Now here is the big plus:

H.I.T. will help you achieve your fat loss and fitness goals more quickly, safely, and efficiently than conventional methods such as functional light weight exercises and steady comfortable cardio that take up hours every week and put more stress on the body.

Here are some quick examples of H.I.T. technique (also viewable in depth on the videos on this site):
Make sure you lift the weight S-L-O-W-L-Y and smoothly with no yanking, bouncing or explosive movement (as you might do with more conventional methods and as you see in many ‘functional’ gyms). Then lower the weight under total control, never dropping the weight. Each rep should roughly be 4-10 seconds of lifting and 4-10 seconds of lowering, with a slight squeeze in the fully contracted position. This will keep the tension on the muscle high and cause a deeper inroad into your strength, which will consequently stimulate the body to increase its resources.

Interestingly to perform your repetitions in this slow controlled manner will necessitate you lowering the weight you have been using, as you will now be working much harder, and more slowly, which is more difficult to do than contemporary methods that frequently involve doing the exercise as quickly as possible and consequently relying on gravity and momentum thus putting very little strain on the muscle. A kettle bell is a fine example of this where the muscle is under very little stress or tension and ultimately gives you a very under achieving work out. If any of this needs more explanation please feel free to contact me via the contact form on contact page.