High intensity training is great for our health, great for losing weight, great for preventing or slowing down bone loss, great for your heart and it can even make us look better in a bikini.
But now research is showing that it is great for our brain cells as well. It can have a great impact on our cognitive and our creative brains. It can even grow new brain cells.
Not all exercise is equal though. High intensity workouts are short but intense. So you have to work much harder and push harder but for shorter bursts. A great example is Crossfit.
The workouts are short but intense and they target many aspects of fitness such as strength, flexibility, endurance, stability, core strength etc..
A NASA study showed that people who exercise are more efficient at work than those who don’t exercise. Exercisers maintained near 100% while non exercisers maintained 50% efficiency.
Another study showed that kids who were fittest scored higher on math and reading than kids who were not. Their fitness was measured by a variety of benchmarks such as strength, endurance and flexibility.
So next time you hit the gym instead of spending an hour on a machine like the treadmill at a moderate pace try a more intense and shorter workout sample below.
Sample high intensity workout
Just do the exercises back to back with little rest. Push to your maximum capacity. Don’t allow yourself to cheat. But do the best you can. If you can’t do as many as 50 squats then cut it down to 40 or 30 or even 10 depending on your fitness level.
50 Body Weight Squats,
40 Sit-Ups,
30 Push Up,
20 Burpees,
30 Push Up,
40 Sit Up,
50 Body weight Squats
 Situps |
 Pushups |
 Burpees |
this does not do justice to interval training, cross fit exercises are not always high intensity in this sense…
I agree Neil. Not all crossfit workouts are high intensity but most are and it’s a great example of large volumes and performed at a maximum or high level of effort.