This Is the Most Effective Workout You Can Do at Home

April 13, 2021 by The/Thirty

It doesn't matter if you work out regularly or haven't worked out in a minute—there's one thing we all probably have in common: We want our workouts to be both fun and effective, right? You get more motivation to push harder when you're actually looking forward to whatever fitness routine you're doing. I know I'm more likely to get out of bed for a morning sweat session if the workout is going to seem to fly by because I'm having a good time and the music is full of bops.

Here's where HIIT workouts can come in handy. Okay, I know. The term "HIIT" can kind of seem scary and a little too intense—I mean, it does have the words "high" and "intensity" in its name. But adding HIIT sessions to your fitness routine can be so effective, and dare I say it, actually fun.

"HIIT stands for high-intensity interval training, which sounds intimidating on its face, but really shouldn't," explains Bree Branker Koegel, NASM CPT, and FitOn App trainer. "Interval training, or deliberately utilizing work to rest ratios, is becoming very popular, and for good reason! The high-intensity aspect has to do with heart rate, so when in concert, you're looking at a workout that will aim to raise your heart rate to a pretty high threshold quickly, and then ask your body to recover quickly as well."

Mindbody fitness specialist and ACE-certified personal trainer Dania Valdes says that since the intensity of this style of training is greater, the training time should be shorter: "This kind of vigorous intensity can be considered training above 80% of our heart rate max (MHR)."