You know the old saying, a job worth doing is worth doing right. At Bari, our job is to sweat our butts off during an adrenaline-pumping power hour of cardio and muscle sculpting. So how do you know when you’re doing it right? Here’s a hint: it’s not how many times you nail Rodeo perfectly, it’s not how much longer you can hold plank than your neighbor, it’s not the depth of the sweat pool that has gathered beneath your head during a Scorpion Series. Nope. It’s all about your heart rate.

A high-intensity workout for the Average Joe gets you working anywhere between 75 to 85 percent of your personal maximum heart rate. Heart rate maximums can be calculated a number of ways. The old, somewhat outdated way of measuring your maximum heart rate is to subtract your age from 220. With our iQniter Heart Rate Monitoring System, the program takes your age, height, weight, weekly amount of exercise, and gender into account in its own specific formula to find your maximum heart rate. The more specificity with which you calculate your heart rate, the more accurately you will be able to measure your intensity percentage. And according to this new study, when your percentage lands between 75 to 85 percent, you are doing incredible things for your overall health.

At the University of Utah, researchers found that intensity mattered much more than duration in regards to weight loss. Their study showed “that even brief episodes of physical activity that exceed a certain level of intensity can have as positive an effect on weight as does the current recommendation of 10 or more minutes at a time.” The current national guideline for adults is to get 150 minutes of exercise a week, and this can be split up into 10 minute increments.

Taking all of this into consideration, with the knowledge that at Bari we actually have the technology to track this and track it accurately, Sarah Levy and I put our method to the test. We did about 13 total minutes of trampoline cardio with a two-minute rest period. All of Sarah’s stats were logged into iQniter, and I took her through some of the Bounce sequences we’re currently doing in classes. her only instructions were to follow along, keep up and focus on moving with intensity. Here’s what we found:

In 13 minutes of Bari, Sarah burned 187 calories, her max heart rate BPM was 191, and she worked out at an intensity level of 86 percent. Eighty. Six. Percent. 187 calories in 13 minutes. Had this been a full hour class, Sarah would have burned something like 748 calories.

 

Tribe. What does this mean for you? It means that, at Bari, you have everything you need right at your fingertips to get the results you crave. It means that with our iQniter system, you have a measurable tool to use in class to make sure you’re attacking your workout and getting the most bang for your buck. It means that if you commit yourself to a mere three classes a week, you’re surpassing that 150 minute recommendation and contributing to your weight loss in the most efficient-scientifically-proven-we-can’t-stop-we-won’t-stop way.

Ready to earn your #bariblackbelt? Join our January challenge to push your limits and see visible results.