I love FitSugar.com, which is the health and fitness branch of the very cool website PopSugar.com. The site is cool, it’s trendy and it tells it like it is. I especially appreciate that this week, as they explain what high-intensity-interval training is and why its so awesome.

Author Leta Shy does a really good job of breaking HIIT down to the basics and explaining what it involves and what it can do for your body.

No matter what your favorite way of getting your cardio in, if you’re trying to  burn calories fast, you should be familiar with HIIT,” says Shy.

As Shy explains, HIIT

stands for high-intensity interval training, and the concept is simple: do your cardio at a normal pace, but pepper your routine with short intervals — usually 30 seconds to a minute — where you are pushing yourself to the max.”

As you guys know by now, I’m a huge advocate of HIIT and have made it a permanent and very important part of my workout program. I’m also thrilled to see that I’m no longer on the fringe; interest in HIIT and what it can do for your body has grown enormously just over the last two years.

There’s are some good reasons for that.

Incorporating HIIT into your normal routine is a smart way to work out; not only are you increasing your endurance and becoming better at your workout, but you are also burning more calories in a shorter amount of time. High-intensity workouts also target belly fat to help you sculpt those six-pack abs.”

Shy’s got it right. You can burn more calories and build more endurance and muscle in a 20 minute HIIT workout than you can in most 45-minute workouts. It’s all about shaking up your metabolism and your muscle memory to get great results in far less time.

Like Shy advises, it’s best to start off slowly, especially if you haven’t been working out for very long. Try replacing one regular cardio session per week with a HIIT session, then gradually build up both the frequency and the intensity of your HIIT workouts.

Before you know it, you’ll be smokin’ hot and fit enough to handle anything!