What Is The Perfect Nutrition For HIIT?

Despite being very popular, HIIT is a subject which many people low very little about. It requires you to take a slightly different approach in your training in order to get the most from the multiple benefits it has to offer. If you’re trying to discover how to build muscle with this style of exercise, then this is crucial.

Of course, we are talking about nutrition. In fact it is the pre-workout period of nutrition which we will be discussing in more depth today because this is the area which many people don’t pay any attention to at all.

Before you workout you need to ensure that your body has been supplied with the best nutrients to perform the tough session ahead. If you do this then you can potentially increase your results by up to 30%, so it is worth taking a few moments to look into the latest science on the subject. [

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The first thing you must do to get the right nutrients before a hard workout is look at which energy source you’ll be using in your session. While long, steady-state cardiovascular workouts tend to slowly chip away at your body’s fat storage, intervals do not do this. Instead, they mainly use your glycogen (carb) stores.

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 as you can see, the quicker your body can deplete those carbohydrate stores during a high intensity training session, the better! This means there’s very little point in consuming a carb rich meal before you train as you’d merely be delaying the process in the gym.

This is why many people choose to workout on an empty stomach. But is this approach really the best way to maximize results?

Not quite. While you should look to avoid heavy carbohydrate sources before you train, you can actually increase your results if you use protein as this will work to protect your lean muscle tissue from being burnt off during an intense training. This means not only will you lose fat, you’ll also hang onto and maybe even build more lean muscle tissue!

Furthermore, many people like to add a BCAA supplement to their post-workout nutrition. Not only is it more beneficial to take it before you train, but it’s actually recommended that you swap out the BCAA’s for EAA’s. The BCAA products you see on the market only contain the three main branched chain amino acids. However, BCAA’s are like a car, they need all parts in order to function properly. Essential Amino Acids contain everything your body cannot produce by itself and have been shown to increase uptake into the muscles by 30%.

Furthermore, consuming your serving pre-workout as opposed to post-workout has been shown to increase muscle uptake by around 27%. Combined with a whey protein shake, you’ll be able to protect your body from any lean tissue breakdown and fight off any feelings of hunger while performing high intensity training and burning through those carbohydrate reserves.

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.

About the author: Russ Howe PTI is a successful fitness instructor who shows people how to build muscle at his gym. His complete guide to hiit will help you to get some great results.