How Often Should I Work Out

There seems to be a lot of answers to the question "How often should I work out?". For the average healthy person with fat loss as their goal you can get fit and trim in just three workouts a week. However, the workouts need to be good intense ones.

Each workout should take less than an hours time. New research has shown that 20-30 minutes of interval training is more effective than 40-60 minutes of long slow cardio. Interval training simply means performing hard segments follwed by recovery. For example, you might go hard for one minute and recover for the next two. Interval training gives you all the health benefits of traditional aerobic training plus it increases your metabolic rate for hours after exercise. This post exercise increase in metabolic rate is the single greatest weight loss aid exercise can provide.

Add 20-30 minutes of weight training to the intervals and you have a sure fire fat loss, lean muscle building exercise routine. Lift heavy weights with low repetitions to build some muscle mass. Muscle is more metabolically active than fat so it burns more calories 24 hours a day. Lifting damages muscle cells and the repair process raises metabolism significantly for up to 48 hours.

On your off days, just be as active as possible, without making an extra effort to go to the gym. Walk to do your errands, clean the house, do some yardwork, or walk the dog. Just do something health promoting and stay on your feet as much as possible.

As you can see you don't have to spend seven days a week at the gym to get results. The keyword in today's new research is intensity. Higher intensity training has been shown to produce greater fat loss, and more muscle gain in less amount of time than the old fashioned, slow, long duration mode of training. So go to your gym workouts with quality not quantity as your mindset and enjoy your time off.

Dr. Lanny Schaffer is an Exercise Physiologist and the President of The International Fitnesss Academy. For more cutting edge fitness tips and information go to http://www.aerobic-exercise-coach.com