HIIT

http://www.musclemedia.com/training/hiit.asp

Much better than jogging as it will build up your endurance faster.

I'm also intrested. I'm doing some basic aerobics, but nothing to serious. Would it be possible to do one session a day, and do that 8 week cycle in 24 days instead? Maybe do each session twice a day?

If you are able to do these workouts twice a day, you are not doing them at the proper intensity.  If you doing them at the correct intensity to get the results you want you will need rest days between them.  While it is a good idea to try to make your training as effective as possible, there are no shortcuts.  Your body gets stronger from rebuilding itself after it is torn down from a workout.  If you don't give it time to rebuild itself, you will get weaker, not stronger.

HIIT sprinting is very stressful on the body.

You will want the rest days if you're doing it right.



No, your body only starts breaking down muscle mass if (1) you don't need it such as doing long distance running and having a large amount of upper body mass or lower body mass for that matter or (2) you don't eat enough.

If you're overweight doing a bunch of running will make you lose weight.. although if you're doing the long distance stuff it's a waste of time IMO compared to other forms of exercise that could get you there sooner (heavy weights, sprinting, etc.).

Diet is the key anyway to body composition, heh.

I have been working on my endurance too, by biking. Does anyone know if a low gear or a high gear is better? I would assume low gear, but I'm not entirely sure.

I would use high gear because it requires more force production, whereas lower gear will mean many more repetitions uselessly. That's probably why you think that's better for endurance, but biking will almost always be predominantly endurance, but by using high gear you can get more of a strength component out of it, even if it's only a CNS based strength. It's much more likely to burn calories faster, too. Especially if you're actually biking outside on a mobile bike (which I'd of course recommend over 'exercise' bikes). You get hills and rougher terrain and other similar conditions than constantly change the intensity of the work, targeting different fitness components at different times, and it's a fairly compound movement. Also, if you hold yourself up instead of sit down you change muscle groups somewhat and add an isometric work for your upper body. PS: I personally recommend biking because of above said reasons and because it's quite low impact.

Walking is walking.  Riding is riding.  Whatever is most comfortable to you -- but really your leg should be JUST short of full extension at the bottom, from what little I know about riding...


Actually, biking can lead to overuse injuries -- especially since the quad contracts concentrically but never needs to contract eccentrically...also has a tendency to make the quads TONS stronger than the glutes/hammies, which is not really beneficial in a lot of other domains.