I wanted to introduce you to HIIT training, HIIT. That’s hyper-intensive interval training.

What that means is we’re going to raise the heart rate through exercise vigorously for a very short amount of time, like 30 seconds or 45 seconds. And then we’re going to drop the heart rate back down through active recovery.

For example, say we’re going to do arm pulses for 20 seconds.

Palms down. Okay. That was about 40 seconds of exercise and I feel the burn in my arms, by my heart rate is also raised. Okay. So HIIT exercise is high-intensity interval training. High-intensity interval training is where you add intensity for a short period of time and then an active recovery. So I have sprinting muscles. Growing up, I’d love to sprint. I can run for 30, 45 seconds a minute without much trouble at top speed. Then I’m tired. I want to rest. I do active recovery. If you sprint for 30 seconds and then you do a fast-paced walk for 45 seconds, that allows the heart rate to come back down. And then you bring it up again, 30 more seconds. Then you bring it back down.

If you do that eight times in a row, I promised you I was going to show you how to exercise in four minutes a day. To get the vigorous exercise you need, you really only need four minutes a day, but we’re going to do that at a 30-second interval, and we’re going to do it eight times.

Does that make four minutes? Yes.

30 seconds times eight is four minutes. But in between those 30-second bursts, we’re going to take a one-minute active recovery break to let the heart rate come down.

We’re on for 30 seconds. We’re off for 60 seconds. We’re on for 30 seconds. We’re off for 60 seconds. If you add that up, you got four minutes of active, vigorous exercise, and then you have one minute times eight is eight minutes. 30-second bursts followed by 60 seconds of active recovery repeated eight times. The total time allotted is 12 minutes, four minutes of vigorous exercise, eight minutes of active recovery. Your cardiovascular health is improved.

I teased you at the end of the second exercise video that we were going to teach you how to do four minutes a day of exercising, and it would be enough for improving your cardiovascular health. Well, I just did some math. It’s really amazing. You can get this whole thing done, this four minutes of vigorous exercise if you peak up to your maximum heart rate or 80% of your maximum heart rate for only 30 seconds and then drop it back down for a minute in active recovery.

You keep walking or you keep moving and exercising, but your heart rate is coming back down, and then you pump it back up to the max heart rate for 30 more seconds.

You only have to do that eight times and you’ve accomplished your four minutes of vigorous exercise in 12 minutes. You’ve rested eight minutes, you’ve worked for four minutes and you’re done. You’re going to keep moving the rest of the day, of course, your moderate exercise, and getting up and keeping fluid in your joints, all that sort of thing. But the actual cardiovascular event is called Peak 8. And this was written about or devised by Dr. Mercola, who is a medical doctor. And he swears by this and there are many, many teachers of Peak 8 and the HIIT training, the high-intensity interval training.

Here are some of the many benefits of HIIT.

Reduced body fat, the best exercise for insulin resistance, dramatically improved muscle tone, firmer skin, and fewer wrinkles, increased energy and libido, improved athletic speed and performance, ability to achieve your fitness goals much faster, continued calorie burn for up to eight hours after an interval session, heart and lungs become stronger and are able to take on sudden intense challenges and recover quicker.