Health and Fitness: High Intensity Exercise For Faster Results

Hit This 3-Move Bodyweight Leg Workout to Smash Calories, Improve Fitness and Build Muscular Endurance

This bodyweight leg day is no stroll in that park, however. A clever combination of controlled bodyweight movements, explosive plyometrics and all out sprints builds strong, functional muscle whilst simultaneously torching through calories.

Use a football pitch if you can't or don't want to mark anything out. Your goal is to get through ten rounds of the dynamic circuit as quickly as possible.

“It’s all about knowing when to take your time and focus on the muscle being worked and when to put your foot down and push it," says Men's Health fitness editor Andrew Tracey. "Use the lunges as an opportunity to get your wind back and keep control of your breathing during the jump squats. The sprints are where you can open up the throttle.”

After the first four or five rounds your legs are going to feel like jelly. But keep the pace up on the sprints or you’ll be here all day...

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1 Walking Lunge

100m

Stand tall with your core braced, (a) step one foot forward and sink into a deep lunge, rear knee lightly touching the floor. (B) Explode forwards back into a standing position, then immediately step the opposite leg forward, repeating the lunge on the opposite side, repeat for 100m

2 Jump squat

20 reps

Place both hands behind your head and stand tall. (A) Push your hips back and descend under control into a full squat, pause then (B) explode back into the air, jumping as high as possible before landing with soft knees, repeat.

3 Max Sprint

100m

100m is short, so keep a strong consistent pace and make sure you lift your knees high (A) and drive with your arms (B). After 100m, get straight back to the lunges.

4 Former Special Forces Veteran Ant Middleton’s Full-Body Workout for True Strength

Ant Middleton is a former elite operative in the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Service, author, and star of Channel 4’s phenomenally successful SAS: Who Dares Wins. This is how he built his body, using simple exercises and minimal equipment.

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High intensity exercise will burn more calories, work your muscles harder and deliver faster results, right? That would appear to be common sense however some people still believe that to achieve fat burning you need to exercise at a moderate level to remain in the "fat-burning zone". This view is based on the fact that during low intensity exercise the body is primarily drawing on fat as fuel and during higher intensity exercise it uses up more carbohydrates. This leads many to believe that long duration low intensity exercise is best for body fat reduction. This is simply not true.

While true that at low intensity you burn a greater percentage of calories from fat the fact is that at low intensity you are burning far fewer calories. Although many factors are involved in exercise induce weight loss the most critical factor is total calories expended. The more calories you burn, the more fat you burn. It is also important to take into account the fact that high intensity exercise provides a metabolic boost that will continue to burn calories at a greater rate for hours after your workout.

With regards resistance training, it is true that it is important to work a certain number of repetitions depending on your goal but it will not get results unless the intensity is high enough to create the stimulus. Also everyone is different so depending on your genetics, what typically would be considered a rep range for muscle building may not work for you. This is where you must experiment a little and judge what exercises, repetitions and routines stimulate your muscles the most to grow.

There are no hard and fast rules apart from the necessity to train intensively and use proper technique. For best results you should aim for muscle failure on each set i.e. you reach the point where you can't complete another rep without sacrificing technique.

Most exercise professionals agree that high intensity exercise is necessary to achieve significant changes in body composition.

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