Is HIIT Good For Muscle Growth?

By Howe Russ


There is so much conflicting advice in the gym that most people find it almost impossible to learn how to build muscle effectively. One of the biggest areas of concern surrounds HIIT.

Many people who perform this type of exercise are going for weight loss, however there is also a major use here for those looking to improve size and strength.

If most men were honest, they'd happily admit that they don't do enough cardiovascular exercise. It's often seen as the boring alternative to resistance training and they don't have the same level of drive for it.

Naturally, this behavior stems from a largely untrue stereotype that cardio is for women and weights are for men. This age old belief is something which has held countless gym members back for years and it's built upon lies.

However, if your primary goal is hypertrophy you are the exact type of person who should be performing regular cardiovascular workouts and one of the best forms of this is high intensity interval training. Not only is it great for fat loss, it'll also help you to build more lean tissue.

There are several key differences between high intensity cardio sessions and steady state workouts. If you've ever used an exercise bike for an hour at a steady pace you've probably felt a little bit bored at certain stages. That's one of the main drawbacks to this style of training and something which high intensity sessions will eliminate.

Interval training is very simple when you get down to the finer details of it. Basically your aim is to switch from a moderate level to a high level every so often, causing your body to be unable to adapt. This will have similar effects on your muscles to a resistance workout.

The two primary energy sources we use during exercise are called aerobic and anaerobic. During regular cardio workouts we use our aerobic system. However, during both resistance training and high intensity intervals we use the anaerobic system instead.

Things get even better when you look at how your body burns calories during this type of training. During a normal session your body stops burning calories when you stop exercising. However, if you have performed an interval session your body will continue to burn calories at an increased rate for 16 hours afterwards! This is also known as 'the afterburn effect'.

As you can see, learning how to build muscle isn't necessarily all about hitting the weights. HIIT is a great way to increase lean tissue, with the added benefit of stripping away unwanted body fat at an increased rate.




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