FitSugar has a simple and effective tip to share: Really push yourself for five minutes of your workout.

My favorite exercise is a cardio DVD that I follow in my living room. Without realizing I was doing it, I often follow FitSugar's tip. I use the weights for a while longer than the instructor, I pump up the intensity, or add some of my own moves to make the workout just a bit more challenging.

Whatever your workout of choice is, try adding five minutes of high intensity activity. Push yourself and let your body get a little winded. Unless you have asthma or another condition that contraindicates you for this type of high-intensity exercise, the change in pace will be good for your workout.

Source

If you've been training hard for an athletic competition and are finally only a few weeks away from the event, you may feel the urge to put in even longer training sessions. Resist this urge. Instead, start scaling back on the volume of work you do from now until the competition.

This process, typically referred to as tapering, can sometimes be a tricky thing to pull off properly. As a recent study in the Strength and Conditioning Journal points out, if you reduce your workout volume too soon you will decrease fitness, while working too hard close to competition compromises recovery and peak performance.

The results of the study show that the best approach is to reduce training volume over a two-week period by 50 percent to 75 percent, without changing the intensity level at which you you train or the number of days you work out. In sum, cut down on volume but not intensity by performing short, high-intensity workouts for the last two weeks leading up to the athletic event.

Source

Just when you thought you had the perfect excuse not to exercise -- and that excuse being a lack of time -- there comes research to invalidate your time-crunch claims.

A recent Canadian study discovered that six sessions of just four to seven full exertion sprints over two weeks improved fitness test performance by ten percent. According to the study, these short, but intense, workouts increased levels of citrate synthase -- markers of muscle tissue's ability to utilize oxygen and boost physical output.

High-intensity training is perfect for people who don't have the time in their schedule for longer endurance-based workouts. And, it doesn't come at the expense of your results. Numerous studies have demonstrated that high-intensity training actually burns more fat than longer exercise sessions performed at a low or moderate effort level.

Source

For quite some time, researchers believed that the tortoise approach of slow and stead truly won the fat-burning race. Working at 65-70 percent of your maximum heart rate (MHR) was typically what was considered to be the ideal "fat-burning zone" (as evidenced by the fact that this very information still appears on some pieces of cardio equipment).

However, this school of thought has been challenged by a number of newer studies, and a growing number of people now subscribe to the idea that shorter, high-intensity interval workouts are much more effective at stripping away fat.

Researchers from Cornell University found that high-intensity intervals burn 30-percent more calories per workout than longer, low- to moderate-intensity sessions. And, a separate study, appearing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, revealed that men who completed 20 weeks of interval training lost nine times more fat than men who followed a more traditional endurance program.

The takeaway? Start ramping up your workout. Try running (or any other form of cardiovascular exercise) for short bursts at a very difficult pace, followed by a minute or two of low-intensity movement. Repeat this process several times for maximum results.

Source