If you have gotten into a workout rut or are having trouble dropping those last five pounds, your body may have adapted to your workout routine. The result is that the routine is no longer effective. One way to boost the effectiveness of your workout, make it more fun and save the amount of time you spend at the gym, is to run with intervals. Relatively brief but intense sprint training can increase your body's ability to burn calories and attain maximum benefit from shorter workouts.
Instructions
Interval one-speed
1. Get on a treadmill and set the speed at 3.5 mph to 4.5 mph. This should be a comfortable walking pace. The treadmill incline should be zero to one percent during this entire interval.
2. Walk at this comfortable pace for three to five minutes to warm up your body.
3. Increase your speed by 0.5 every 30 seconds until you can no longer maintain a walk and must jog. Then increase this speed by 0.5. You have now found your "set pace." You should feel like you can comfortably run for 30 to 45 minutes.
4. Run at this pace for three to five minutes.
5. After three to five minutes, increase your speed by 1.0 for 30 seconds. After 30 seconds at this higher speed, go back to your "set pace" for 30 seconds. Repeat this process five times.
6. Go back to your "set pace" and jog for another three minutes before starting interval two.
Interval two-hills
7. At your "set pace" bring your treadmill to a one percent incline. Run at this incline for two minutes.
8. Increase the incline to four percent and run for 30 seconds.
9. Increase your treadmill's incline to seven percent and drop your speed by 0.5. Run here for 30 seconds then go back to zero incline and "set pace" for 40 seconds. Repeat this process three to five times.
10. Go back to zero to one percent incline and "set pace" for three minutes.
11. Finally, bring your treadmill speed down to 3.5 to 4.5 to cool down.
Tags: three five, your pace, five minutes, pace three, three five minutes, your body, your speed