High intensity exercise can bring a whole host of benefits, increased fitness, decreased cardiovascular disease and diabetes risk, increased weight loss, and it can be enjoyable! Here’s how you can add a little spice to your workouts, and greatly increase their benefit. High intensity exercise isn’t for everyone as it does pose a risk for some people, especially those with heart disease and who are pregnant. Talk to your doctor before adding these to your workout.

When you work out, you generally go as hard as you feel comfortable. Increasing the intensity (by going faster, or increasing the resistance) can mean that it hurts a lot more or you can’t go as long. Neither of those options sounds appealing.

But there is a way to incorporate high intensity exercise while not getting a lot of pain and while still getting a good volume in. It involves doing lower intensity exercise with brief periods of high intensity exercise thrown in. In the exercise world this is called interval or “Fartlek” training (no that’s not a misspelling!). Here’s how you do it:

1. Fartleks can be done with cycling, running, skiing, or just about any other aerobic activity. Begin by going at a pace that is quite comfortable and that may feel a bit slow.
2. Once you are warmed up, you can start adding intervals. Sprint as fast as you can for 5-8 seconds. The easiest way to do this is to pick a landmark that is ahead and sprint there. After the sprint DO NOT STOP but continue with your initial pace.
3. Continue at the slower pace until you feel fully recovered. This can be a while (up to 5 minutes) so give yourself lots of time.
4. Once you feel recovered you can do another interval.
5. Starting off, limit the number of intervals you do in a workout to about 2-3. Once you’ve been doing intervals for a while you can slowly increase the number of intervals in a session. I wouldn’t do more than 8 per session, and even that can be too much sometimes.

Interval or Fartlek training can add a lot of spice to your workout and can bring a large number of gains. But it is very taxing to the body, so give yourself at least a days rest in between sessions. Listen to your body, and if you start to feel aches and pains, slow it down and get some rest.

High intensity exercise can bring great benefits and add a lot of spice to your workouts. Just be cautious with their incorporation, enjoy in moderation and you can experience great benefits from high intensity exercise.