Welcome to the Get Fit Guys quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

Imagine a workout in which you burn a lot of calories and when you're done, your body somehow keeps on burning more calories for hours and hours and maybe even continues

burning more calories into the next day.

Now, what if you could achieve that bonus calorie burning effect in less than half the time

of your normal workout?

Well, although this promise of enhanced calorie burning might seem a little bit like something

you'd see in a fancy made-for-TV

exercise contraption or some expensive magic pill advertisement. It's actually based on a simple

and well-researched concept called high-intensity interval training or hit. The concept of high-intensity

interval training is fairly simple. To do hit, you warm up,

and then you do an intense burst of cardio, followed by a full recovery period. And you repeat that

several times during the workout. For example, a hit workout on a bicycle might involve getting

onto the bike, warming up for five minutes,

and then performing six to eight 30-second efforts, as hard as you can possibly go,

followed by a very easy 90 seconds, up to three minutes of easy pedaling between each 30-second hard effort.

Once you've completed each of the hard efforts, you're done. With a routine

such as the one I just described, you could burn just as many calories as an easy one-hour bike ride,

stimulate more muscle, get fitter faster, and still have time to go shopping for new clothes to

fit your shrinking waistline. So here's how high intensity interval training actually works.

When you exercise, your body uses oxygen to create energy. But when you reach a high intensity

during exercise, your body's demand for oxygen exceeds your ability to breathe in that much

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