Posted by Carrie Lazarus - I’ve been hearing from many of you excited to try interval training.  If you missed the report we did at the Institute for Human performance at SUNY Upstate, we showed how many calories you can burn by walking, running and doing intervals of walking and sprints on the treadmill.  Exercise physiologist Carol Sames had me wear an oxygen mask as I exercised on the treadmill.  It measures exactly how many calories you burn as you work out.  A 20 minute walk at 3.5 miles an hour burned 90 calories.  Running for 20 minutes at 5 miles an hour burned 230 calories.  Intervals of walking for 2 minutes at 3.5 miles an hour and then sprinting for 45 seconds to a minute, then walking again for 2 minutes burned 195 calories; nearly as many as running the whole time.

So interval training turns out to be a very efficient way to work out.  And you don’t need a treadmill.  You can do it on any exercise machine, or even walking outside.  If you’re already exercising and would like to try it, experts recommend starting with a walk at your normal speed, then increasing the speed by a couple of miles an hour for 30 seconds, then go back to the walk.  Try to work up to 10 sprints.  As you get more comfortable with interval training, increase your sprint speed until you can sustain it for one minute, then return to the walk.  

And the calorie burn from interval training doesn’t stop when you get off the treadmill.  Studies have shown you’ll continue to burn calories at a higher rate anywhere from a couple of hours to 24 hours later.  So start sprinting!!!