5 Ways to Burn Fat Through HIIT with the WIRTUAL App

December 21, 2021

There are so many ways to burn fat and lose weight, and HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training is one of the best ways to do it. This is because HIIT is fast, intense, and requires you to push yourself. It consists of intervals of fast-paced exercise and rest. During the exercise portion, your heart rate could go up to 85-90% of your maximum heart rate, and the rest time allows your heart to slow down again. The exercise portion and the rest portion alternate until you have completed the entire workout, which tends to be 10-30 minutes.

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This article will recommend 5 ways to burn fat through HIIT exercises with the WIRTUAL application which will introduce you to a new experience with exercise, making it more fun than it has ever been.

5 Ways to Burn Fat Through HIIT with the WIRTUAL App

When you do a HIIT workout, your body will source this energy primarily from carbohydrates. The fat in your body is burned during rest, after the workout. This allows your body to burn more energy than usual for up to the next 48 hours.

The best HIIT workouts are the following:

1. Interval running

Interval running is done through interchanging short sprints with slower jogs. For example, once you have finished warming up, you start with running as fast as you can for 2 minutes followed by 2-3 minutes of slow jogging or walking. Alternate between sprinting and jogging/walking until the end of your workout. This way of running burns more fat than only running fast the entire time.

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If you are interested in interval training, you must remember to warm up first. You can do this by slowly jogging at 50% capacity for 20-40 minutes. Then you can perform interval running for 4-5 rounds. Overall, your workout should consist of 20 seconds of sprinting and 30-40 seconds of jogging or walking per round.

2. Speed walking

Speed walking or fast walking works in the same way as interval running does. If you’re not into running, this is a great alternative. For speed walking, remember the 2:1:3 ratio. That is, normal walking for 2 minutes, speed walking for 1 minute, and speed walking even faster for 3 minutes. You should aim to complete 10-20 sets of this without stopping. Before beginning the workout, remember to warm up for at least 5 minutes to reduce the risk of injury.

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The benefits of walking HIIT other than its ability to burn fat is that it also strengthens your arteries, builds lean muscle in your legs, tightens your abs and hips, improves your energy and metabolism, and most importantly, increases your endurance as well.

3. Interval cycling

Interval programs can go beyond running, there are also interval programs you can do with cycling. Interval cycling ideally takes 20 minutes and comes in different levels of difficulty: easy, moderate, hard, and all-out.

Easy: at this level you would cycle at a comfortable speed (one which you think you could handle even if you cycled all day) and you would adjust the resistance from time to time.

Moderate: at this level, things become a little bit more challenging, but is also still manageable. You're breathing should get a little faster. You should still be able to have a conversation, But you may struggle a bit at the end of your sentences. You should adjust your resistance to the point where you feel as though you are cycling up a small hill.

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Hard: if you cycle at this level, you should be struggling to maintain a calm breath. It should feel difficult to maintain a certain level of speed. You would only be able to speak one or two words at a time. You should be adjusting your resistance at a medium to difficult level on the bike.

All-Out: at this level, you give the workout all the energy you have. Adjust the resistance to the highest level that you can take, but make sure that you are still able to continue cycling until the end of the workout.

4. Swimming with HIIT

This is another way to workout if you want to avoid putting pressure on your feet and ankles. It is an alternative to running or cycling, which can feel straining. Swimming is an exercise that you can do that will produce minimal force or pressure on your body. 

Swimming with HIIT works similarly to the other exercises mentioned. As you swim back and forth in a pool, you would alternate between swimming as fast as you can and resting for 15-20 seconds. You should aim to accomplish 10-20 rounds of this. If this is too intense for you, you can adjust the routine so your rest time extends to 15-30 seconds instead.

Image from enjoy-swimming

We recommend that the style of swimming should be freestyle or breast stroke because these two forms of swimming can burn more calories and are easy to perform as well. However, regardless of the swimming style, the best way to burn calories is to swim faster. And if you really want to challenge yourself, you can even try out butterfly stroke since it is also great for burning calories.

5. Dancing with HIIT

For anyone that is unable to workout at a gym or fitness center, you can also do HIIT workouts at home by dancing with HIIT. There are many ways you can dance with HIIT. You May have heard of the T25 program, which is an intense full body exercise that you would perform 5 days a week for 25 minutes each time. With this program, you must resist taking even a minute of rest until you have completed the entire 25 minutes.

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If this program is too intense for you right now, there are other similar programs you can follow first to work you way up to T25 such as:

How to begin working out with WIRTUAL

Anyone that wants to make their workouts more fun, and receive cryptocurrency (WIRTUAL Coins) from their exercises, can download the WIRTUAL 2.0 application on the App Store or Play Store (available on 15 January 2022).

The app contains challenges that you can join for free such as the 4 Elements Challenge. In the 4 Elements Challenge, there are 4 modes to choose from: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. The submission of results (to compete and earn coins) will be made available on 15 February 2022.

For dance workouts, WIRTUAL also has Dance to Earn, which will be available on 15 March 2022. 

We recommend that the Air Challenge within the 4 Elements Challenge is best suited for HIIT workouts. It will make your HIIT training more fun, challenging, and motivating. Air Challenge ranks its contestants based on distance and speed, making it ideal for HIIT. Within Air Challenge, there are 4 categories: running, walking, swimming, and cycling, so you can choose whichever best suits you. 

How to submit your results on WIRTUAL

The submission of results works through tracking which can be done on the Strava Application or on your Fitbit or Garmin smart watch (Apple Health and Google Fit coming soon). Once you have completed your workout, you can submit these results to WIRTUAL, and the following day you will automatically receive WIRTUAL Coins in your wallet.

  • If you are running, you must track it in “running” mode on your device
  • If you are walking, you must track it in “walking” mode on your device
  • If you are cycling, you must track it in “cycling” mode on your device
  • If you are swimming, you must track it in “swimming” mode on your device
  • If you are working out, you must track it in “workout” mode on your device

Conclusion

HIIT is the way to go for anyone that loves working out and wants to see results quickly. It is considered to be one of the best ways to burn fat and tone up and is able to provide these results faster than many other forms of exercise.

HIIT may be a very intense exercise, but if you are patient with yourself and work on it consistently, your body will get used to it and it could become really fun. Not to mention, with fast results, you will be able to see the changes in your body, and what could be more motivating than that? Make sure you do your research and find the best type of HIIT that suits your personal needs and fits into your lifestyle.