Swimsuit season is not too far off. Are you ready?
There's a new trend in working out. It's popping up all over and people of all ages and fitness levels are doing it.
"It's really popular now," said Anna Taggart, the group exercise manager at the Roanoke Athletic Club.
It's high intensity interval training.
"Functional training, constantly varied, done at a high intensity," said Bobby Simpson, a fitness trainer at Gold's Gym in Roanoke County.
The idea behind this type of workout is to constantly challenge your body. "Your body is shocked with new exercises. It responds much quicker as far as your results," Simpson said.
This type of workout doesn't have just one name. It's actually many different classes offered at several different gyms, but all with the same idea.
The idea is to do high intensity, short workouts that use the whole body. A person may do 45 seconds of one exercise and then do 45 seconds of a completely different exercise. The moves typically involve getting the heart rate up and using different muscles.
"You can get a pretty good workout in a short period of time," said Roanoke Athletic Club member Tom Palmer.
Class names include Synergy and TRX at the Roanoke Athletic Club in Roanoke County and AGX, Bolt and Warrior at Gold's Gym in Roanoke County. The moves have just as many names including the atomic push up, the leap frog, kettle swings, and wall balls."When you do functional training you utilize multiple muscle groups that are firing at the same time and you burn a tremendous amount of calories," said Simpson.
"It's surprising when you're in here doing something. it doesn't look like it's that hard
then you just start sweating after doing it," said Palmer.
These moves are for all fitness levels because every exercise can be modified for the person who's doing it, said Taggart.
"I'll have someone with a very low fitness working right next to someone and they're both being challenged at the same time," said Simpson..
With summer not too far off fitness experts say this type of training will get you ready. "If you're goal is weight loss, losing inches, toning, getting ripped up, being fit, functional training is the way to go," Simpson said. "It's the only way to go."
To see what the training looks like watch the story here on WDBJ7.
