What Is The Perfect Nutrition For HIIT?

By Russ Howe


If you are trying to learn how to build muscle with HIIT then you may have noticed how much confusion surrounds this popular training method. Despite it's huge popularity, many people make some crucial mistakes when designing their high intensity interval program.

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.

Before you workout you need to ensure that your body has been supplied with the best nutrients to perform the tough session ahead. If you do this then you can potentially increase your results by up to 30%, so it is worth taking a few moments to look into the latest science on the subject. []

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.

As you may already be aware, interval training's real benefits begin when you shut the gym door behind you as you leave. Your body enters a process called EPOC, also known as the afterburn effect by many trainers. This is where your body has lost so much of it's carbohydrate resources that it begins to shield what's left and instead uses your fat stores to provide you with energy. You guessed it, this results in increased fat burning and the phenomenon can go on for fourteen hours if you do thing effectively.

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 all of those people who insist on training first thing in the morning on an empty stomach are actually onto something?

Not quite. While performing interval training on an empty stomach is slightly more beneficial than performing it with a ton of carbs in your system, there is an even better way to increase results further. The biggest mistake people tend to make when watching their carbohydrate intake is forgetting to increase protein intake. As a result their body burns off a lot of muscle. To avoid this, simply increase your protein intake. This can be done by hitting the gym after a whey protein shake instead of a carbohydrate heavy meal.

Furthermore, many people like to add a BCAA supplement to their post-workout nutrition. Not only is it more beneficial to take it before you train, but it's actually recommended that you swap out the BCAA's for EAA's. The BCAA products you see on the market only contain the three main branched chain amino acids. However, BCAA's are like a car, they need all parts in order to function properly. Essential Amino Acids contain everything your body cannot produce by itself and have been shown to increase uptake into the muscles by 30%.

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.

While these approaches are a little different than the advice which goes with a regular training program, interval training is anything but a regular training program and there is already sufficient scientific evidence pointing towards these methods. If you want to learn how to build muscle using HIIT then you need to take a little bit of time to structure your pre-workout nutrition in order to increase results to their maximum potential.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment