BENEFITS OF TRAINING AT A HIGH INTENSITY
There have been many scientific studies listing countless benefits of high intensity interval training like sprints. A paper just published in the American College of Sport’s Medicine’s Exercise and Sport Sciences Review (July 2009) listed the following benefits that intense aerobic interval training provides for the heart over low or moderate intensity exercise.
- Increased maximal oxygen uptake
- Improved heart muscle contractile function
- Improved heart muscle calcium handling
- Reduced cardiac dysfunction in metabolic syndrome
- Reversed pathological cardiac hypertrophy
- Increased physiological hypertrophy of the heart muscle
- Overall: improved quality of life and length of life by avoiding fatal heart attacks.
The research concluded that “high intensity may be an important success factor for designing effective exercise programs and that high intensity may be particularly critical for improving cardiac function.”
