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Abby's Magazine - Volume 5 Issue 1 | Page 19 quickly. Maintaining good form during each movement is very important. Once your muscles have fatigued to the point you are no longer able to hold proper form, you must stop or risk injury. It's also important to decrease the frequency of training to allow for proper recuperation. Training Harder But Smarter The greater the intensity of the exercise you perform, the less time is needed to accomplish successful results. This means there is an inverse relationship between the intensity of your workout and the frequency. You may think that high intensity weight training would only be effective for beginners, but intermediate and advanced weight trainers also benefit. However, as you become more advanced and capable of greater intensity in your workouts, you actually need more rest and less frequency in order to avoid overtraining. It is possible to over- exercise or over-train your muscles and suffer significant setback, illness or injury. When you use high intensity weight training, you shouldn't work out more than three non- consecutive days each week, and even less if you are an advanced athlete, an older athlete or if you don't recover quickly. Hard training breaks down muscle and makes them slightly weaker. It is during the rest periods between your workouts that your muscles grow stronger. This adaptation requires both physiologic stress to the muscles, rest and adequate diet to build strong muscles. When enough rest is not included between HIIT sessions, your improvements will plateau and your performance will ultimately decline. The term "overtraining syndrome" encompasses not only the physiological changes but also emotional, mental and behavioral symptoms that can persist for weeks or months. The appropriate volume of exercise to avoid overtraining syndrome will depend upon your age, gender, nutrition, rest schedule, quality of sleep, recovery time, genetics and training goals. Keys to Success Using High Intensity Weight Training High intensity weight training does not allow your muscle to rest between movements and engages more of the muscle being used. You can't use momentum as you go through the movement, and this forces your muscles to work harder. During SuperSlow weight training you are also working your muscle to the point of failure, or the point at which you cannot do another repetition. This builds more muscle in a shorter period of time and is safer than other forms of strength training. As Dr. Doug McGuff, author of "Body by Science," told WebMD: "With other exercises, to make them more challenging, you usually have to increase the force required — the weight level, whatever — which brings on aches and pains. This makes them more dangerous. With SuperSlow, you can make exercise much more challenging without increasing force." A reduction in momentum and the necessity of proper form also reduces the potential for injury. Increasing the challenge to your muscle without increasing the potential for damage to joints and muscle may improve your overall success with the program. High intensity weight training also improves your cardiovascular fitness. While you can improve your aerobic capacity with aerobic exercises like jogging or rowing, aerobic capacity also improves with strength training, as your muscles require more oxygen. This demand increases the workload on your heart and lungs to deliver the oxygen where it's needed. High intensity weight training has the added benefit of training your body to increase energy production at the cellular level by delivering substrate to your mitochondria more quickly, effectively and efficiently than traditional aerobic exercise. Specific High Intensity Weight Training Benefits Your body experiences several benefits from exercise. However, high intensity weight training offers specific benefits you may enjoy after just a few short months.