Sprints!
Today’s fat loss post leads on from my video last week and takes us into one of the best fat-loss tools at your disposal – sprinting!
As always, aligning with our ancestors way of life, I am sure that once I a while we survived by running at full-speed to either kill for food or flee from an attack – these bursts of speed would have no doubt been enhanced by fight of flight adrenaline-like chemicals surging through the bloodstream, sounds like fun to me!
Once this sprint was over and our ancestors, hopefully survived, the resulting biochemical signals prompted a release of hormones and gene expressing events that led to the generation of stronger, more powerful muscles with the ability to go a little bit faster next time.
Sprinting elicits a rise of hormones that strengthens muscles, adaptive tissues and joints. It accelerates fat loss due to the intensity of effort and the lasting metabolic effect hours after the session.
I always caution building up slowly, to reduce the risk of injury. Sprints can be implemented on grass, treadmill, stationary bike or the stair climber – although I prefer barefoot over the local sports field.
Build up to a workout that includes 6 all out sprints of between 10 and 20 seconds – anything longer is not really an all out sprint. As you sprint, think about being chased by a tiger or rhino – that should help elicit the adaptive response needed to kick into the body fat stores.
Through training many clients, I have personally witnessed the powerful effect sprinting has on the loss of fat tissue and the increase in muscle mass – stop going for hours on the treadmill and instead move to bursts of all out effort as mentioned above, interspersed with a minutes rest. Your workout will be over in less than 10 minutes, however, the metabolic effect will last for days...