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  • By Russ Hollywood


    If you are trying to learn how to build muscle with HIIT then you may have noticed how much confusion surrounds this popular training method. Despite it's huge popularity, many people make some crucial mistakes when designing their high intensity interval program.

    The main area which needs to be looked at is pre-workout nutrition. There are many individuals who are more than prepared to go all out in the gym on a daily basis, but lack the nutritional knowledge to get the rewards their hard efforts deserve.

    If you can take the necessary steps to provide your muscles with the right fuel for each session then you will in turn increase your overall results by almost 30%, according to the latest scientific studies on the topic. []

    Before you can work out what you should be eating prior to a high intensity interval workout you need to look at what type of food your body uses for fuel during this type of exercise because it's slightly different to regular training. While long, steady state cardio primarily burns fat stores, albeit at a very slow rate, high intensity intervals uses your carbohydrate stores for fuel.

    As you may already be aware, interval training's real benefits begin when you shut the gym door behind you as you leave. Your body enters a process called EPOC, also known as the afterburn effect by many trainers. This is where your body has lost so much of it's carbohydrate resources that it begins to shield what's left and instead uses your fat stores to provide you with energy. You guessed it, this results in increased fat burning and the phenomenon can go on for fourteen hours if you do thing effectively.

    So, the key thing we want to achieve is to help you burn through your body's excess carbohydrate stores while you are working out in the gym. For this very reason, consuming a high carbohydrate meal before a workout would make very little sense.

    Does this mean all of those people who insist on training first thing in the morning on an empty stomach are actually onto something?

    Not quite. While performing interval training on an empty stomach is slightly more beneficial than performing it with a ton of carbs in your system, there is an even better way to increase results further. The biggest mistake people tend to make when watching their carbohydrate intake is forgetting to increase protein intake. As a result their body burns off a lot of muscle. To avoid this, simply increase your protein intake. This can be done by hitting the gym after a whey protein shake instead of a carbohydrate heavy meal.

    One other minor mistake many people make is to go with BCAA supplements after a session. Recent studies confirm that consuming Essential Amino Acids (EAA's) instead of BCAA's will increase results further. While any branched chain amino acids supplement will provide you with three of the key amino acids for building lean muscle tissue, they neglect the others. Amino acids function as a team, therefore taking EAA's would be much more functional.

    Most people who use the gym these days are familiar with protein shakes but they take them after they workout. Research reveals that you can dramatically increase your success if you also consume 15-20 grams of whey protein before you perform any high intensity activity, as well as your regular shake afterwards. This makes perfect sense because your body would naturally begin looking at your protein stores once it's carbohydrates are running low.

    While these approaches are a little different than the advice which goes with a regular training program, interval training is anything but a regular training program and there is already sufficient scientific evidence pointing towards these methods. If you want to learn how to build muscle using HIIT then you need to take a little bit of time to structure your pre-workout nutrition in order to increase results to their maximum potential.




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