Over jogging? Mix it up and get faster results!

There's nothing wrong with a nice, long jog. BUT, if you're slogging it out on the pavement to get a specific result (e.g. weight loss or increased fitness) there are more effective forms of exercise. I've written about interval training before, but to summarise quickly, interval training gets better results in much less time. Why? A good analogy is a jumbo jet... as it takes off it uses a lot more fuel than when cruising at altitude. It's the same with your body, you burn more fuel and get a better workout when you work with intensity, (e.g. sprint training) than when you're cruising (e.g. jogging).Sometimes, it’s nice when someone puts a program in front of you and says, “don’t think, just do this!” so I decided it’d be nice to share with you some ideas for running based interval training programs that don’t take long (20-30 mins each), don’t need much equipment (shoes, a sports field, the odd hill) and will make you feel fab!Include a few of these in your weekly fitness program and watch the results roll in. Constantly bringing your heart rate up and then down again throughout the course of your workout is by far the quickest way to burn fat and get your cardiovascular fitness up to scratch, so if you have fitness or weight loss goals to hit, try these out!Feel free to adjust the target times and rest periods to match your fitness level, the below are based on people with an average to above average level of fitness already. 

Session 1

• Warm up and stretching
• 4 x 200m (with 2 mins rest between each)
• 8 x 100m (with 1 min rest between each)

Session 2

• Warm up and stretching
• 3 x 1320m (try to do these in 6-7 mins and rest for 3 mins between each)

Session 3

• Warm up and stretching
• 1 x 800m (try to complete in 3-4 mins and rest for the same before moving on)
• 6 x 200m (rest for 1.5-2 mins between each)

Session 4

• Warm up and stretching
• 2 x 400m (try to complete in around 90-95 secs and rest for 3 mins between each)
• 2 x 200m (try to complete in 38-42 secs and rest for 2 mins between each)
• 6 x 100m (try to complete in 17-19 secs and rest for 50 secs between each)

Session 5

• Warm up and stretching
• 4 x 200m (try to complete in 38-40 secs and rest for 2 mins between each)
• 8 x 100m (try to complete in 17-19 secs and rest for 50 secs between each)
• 10 x 50m (try to complete in 9 secs or less and rest for 25 secs between each)

Session 6

• Warm up and stretching
• 1 x 600m (try to complete in 2-2.5 mins and rest 4 mins before moving on)
• 1 x 400m (try to complete in 90 secs and rest 3 mins before moving on)
• 3 x 200m (try to complete in 35-40 secs and rest 100 secs between each)
• 8 x 100m (try to complete in 16-18 secs and rest 45 secs between each)

What to make it tougher?

Find a nice, long, sloping hill, or a good set of stairs… do your warm up and stretching.Now start your stopwatch and get to the top of that hill/stair set as quickly as you can. Stop the watch when you reach the top, record your time and rest for three times longer than you ran for (so if the sprint took you 30 seconds, you’d take 90 seconds to walk/jog slowly back to the bottom and recover before starting over).Repeat this 10 times and record how long each run takes you. At the end, add up all your times and find your average by dividing the total sum of your run times by 10. Record your score and do this workout once every week or two, noting your progress at each session. See what time you can get your average down to!