Benefits of 1 Minute of All-Out Effort during Exercise
well.blogs.nytimes.com
well.blogs.nytimes.com
"[they] warmed up for two minutes on stationary bicycles, then pedaled as hard as possible for 20 seconds; rode at a very slow pace for two minutes, sprinted all-out again for 20 seconds; recovered with slow riding for another two minutes; pedaled all-out for a final 20 seconds; then cooled down for three minutes."
Sure, the exertions total to one minute, but the recovery periods and cooldown are a very important aspect of the workout. Muscles are still burning glucose and oxygen, clearing lactic acid, and generally doing all the things that exercise is good for during this time.
Wish there was a third group that simply did 10 minutes exercise at the same exertion as the endurance group.
“But if you are someone, like me, who just wants to boost health and fitness and you don’t have 45 minutes or an hour to work out, our data show that you can get big benefits from even a single minute of intense exercise.”
The days after I did those, were the clearest, most relaxed days of all.
I ended up with a resting heart rate in the 30s.
It's not the literal maximum (the maximum you can achieve), it's the average based on age. So you find the maximum for your age in the chart (or calculate it) and set target zones when exercising.
http://www.runnersworld.com/ask-the-sports-doc/what-is-my-ma... - another discussion about it.
The comparison group which achieved the same results did 45 min exercises.
Active recovery just means staying in some sort of minimal motion to keep your blood circulating and let your heart rate come down a little more gently. It's usually nowhere near the intensity of regular base cardio, so I think the headline is reasonably accurate.
They also did not check to see if people 'capped out' sooner.
Specifically, the author delves into 10-20-30 training, which I've personally started in the past few weeks. It definitely kicks my ass, but I feel great afterwards and it requires significantly less time than moderate exercise.
[0]: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2015/07/29/a-way-to-get...
I would say the warm-up is as well, because if you start a full sprint out of nowhere you are likely going to tear a muscle one day or the other.
I've also never did more than a few incremental warm up sets before lifting (relatively heavy) and have never had a pull or a tear.
Warming up is one of those seemingly agreed upon myths in which the scientific evidence is minimal and typically shows the contrary.
edit: for example: http://healthland.time.com/2013/04/08/why-stretching-may-not...
And to add to this, it doesn't even make sense from an evolutionary standpoint. Having a physiology that requires warming up muscles before needing to escape a threat would be weeded out pretty quickly. A predator attacking a camp of humans, for instance, would allow those that can run fast without their "muscles pulling or tearing" to escape leaving those without such an advantage laying about groaning in pain while the predator gets their fill.
Is this true? I mean we have different nutrition now. Ancient humans could have had problems putting on muscle mass and fat. Maybe they exercised more, maybe not. When I watch documentaries with hunter/gatherers they sit around quite a bit.
Warming up has the benefit of lubing up your joints. I think we've all had the instance where our body are relatively stiff and if we do, say, a push up, our joints pop or make cracking sounds. I remember squatting once when I didn't fully warm up. My knee wanted to pop during the squat and it felt extremely uncomfortable trying to exert force on that leg. When there isn't any extra weight, merely extending your leg with a pop wouldn't bother anybody, but exerting a lot of force and doing so slowly sure wasn't a pleasant experience. What are the chances of serious injury? I don't know, but it hurt enough for me to not want to find out.
Another thing warming up helps with is to acclimate you to your working set weight. I know the first set of my bench press usually ends in a grinder and is the roughest out of all my sets. I'm not sure if it's just my mind acclimating to the weight or a physiological thing like more blood getting pumped to my muscles. Either way, I'm fairly certain (but do not have any sources) injury rates would be increased if you tried to deadlift your max without properly warming up.
The running thing seems less likely to be true though. I wouldn't put my bed in a field, sleep 8 hours, hop out and go full out on a sprint, but I'm not going to do 20 minutes of stretching or ride a bike before doing a few sets of sprints.
Long distance warm ups seem even less likely to be needed than Sprints.
And, for what it's worth, I've done "max effort" deadlifts without warming up once or twice. Mostly to show off, but I had lifted those weights before (that day in one case, a couple days back in the other), and didn't have any issues. I could have been hurt, I guess, so my 'anecdata' is no evidence, but even so, not warming up isn't a guarantee of injury either.
I never said you will for sure get injured, merely the chances increase. And I agree that some people have warm ups that are too intense.
That's not to say I don't believe but that I wonder if there is something more nuanced which explains the differences in our experiences.
If you don't mind me asking, what kinds of sprinting do you do and how fast/fit/flexible are you?
Your evolutionary point makes sense but for example, my cats do stretch whenever they wake up. I imagine it's not necessary for them to stretch before moving but by stretching every time they remain very flexible. Kids for example don't really need to warm up and seem to have no trouble running right away, but they also are way more flexible than adults typically are so I wonder if that has something to do with it..
You aren't thinking it through. Humans evolved to be long distance runners, not sprinters. Early hunters were all about patiently chasing prey at a very moderate speed over miles and miles until the prey literally collapsed out of exhaustion.
In stark contrast, you have felines such as lions, which are all about short bursts of incredible speed and agility. Their entire bodies are designed for quick acceleration to very high speeds, but if they couldn't catch their prey during that short interval they would be screwed.
Edit: your scenario of "a predator attacking a camp of humans" is not realistic. Most predators are afraid of fire, and even fewer would attack groups of other predators (which humans are).
Sample size of one: I just started to "get fit" after 10 years of sitting on my ass. I'm running every morning when I wake up (I always wake up about 5am, but usually I just go back to sleep until the 7am alarm). So I open eyes, put on clothes, and hit the road within 5 minutes of waking up. I have to start at a slow jog, and I'm not able to go much faster than a speedy walk for about 10 minutes before I can actually jog. So for 10 minutes I'm pacing for a 15 minute mile. I can literally feel the moment at which I can comfortably jog, and then I'm able to do 10 minute miles for the duration of the run.
When I started this at the beginning of April, I could only do 30 minutes at a time and was hitting about 2.25 miles. This week I ran 5.5 miles in 60 minutes, still have to take my slow start.
As a contrast, I've been fit all my life (two sport college athlete, resting heart rate in the 30s) and I absolutely cannot imagine sprinting without a warmup.
GP, how fast are you? 100m time? I have never, ever seen a coach or trainer recommend anything other than a long slow warmup. As someone who has a chronic hamstring injury, warmup is crucial to any exercise that I do.
Why on earth didn't they have a control group that did 10 minutes of slow cycling instead of a bunch of couch potatoes that did nothing? For all we know, the people who actually turned up for the study regularly to do the actual rides walked far further to get to and from the study than the people who did nothing. And for all we know, 10 minutes of slow cycling has the same measurable effect as 45 minutes of cycling.
What on earth is wrong with medical science/science journalism, that this is the end result of however many dollars of public money? Are they worried that if they actually do a really large, robust study that all future funding will have dried up?
Surely there is a massive public interest in such research. Why doesn't someone just do the sodding research and find out once and for all?
It's the journalism that failed you. If you go to a quality site like mensfitness rather than NYT, you'll find:
"To prove it, the researchers put 27 sedentary men to the test. For 12 weeks, nine of the men were asked to perform three weekly sessions of intense sprint interval training on stationary bikes, 10 were assigned to moderate-intensity continuous training (also on bikes), and six served as the control group, completing no exercise. ...
"After three months, all the athletes exhibited similar results and health benefits—even though the moderate-intensity continuous training involved five times as much exercise and a five-fold greater time commitment."
http://www.mensfitness.com/training/workout-routines/10-minu...
Sounds very similar to the Tabata interval protocol, with the difference being the extended rest period between the "sprint" sections. I have done a variation of this in my own training in the past. It works really well on an elliptical trainer. My subjective feeling is that training this way works pretty well for building endurance and burning fat.
* 2 minute warmup
* 20 seconds all out sprint
* 120 seconds of slow pace to catch your breath
* repeat 2 more times
So in total, the "hard work" was 1 minute, but you're actually active and in the gym for about 10-11 minutes.
The benefit here is the metabolic boost from strenuous work lasts much longer than steady-state cardio, and this has been observed in previous studies.
The problem is that humans are incredibly adaptable - so 1 minute of hard exercise cannot be applied indefinitely. You will need to increase that time in order to see continuous benefits, as well as vary the amount of strenuous exercise that is continuously performed. Anyone who has never trained before is going to see benefit from some physical activity, but as soon as they are adapted, the benefits disappear without progressive loading.
So practically speaking for HIIT, if the premise here was you went "all out", you can't possible go more intense than "all out" because you gave a max effort. So the only other variable to fix is to do more of it.
If I'm out of shape, a 30 second sprint might not be as fast as when I'm in shape.
I'm talking from experience.
[edit]
But also, speaking from many years of experience with Crossfit and military high intensity circuit training... your explanation leaves out a little bit:
High intensity can be achieved in different ways depending on how your workout is structured.
If a given workout specifies the movements, how much weight to use, and how many reps / sets to do, then your independent variable becomes the time it takes to complete. To increase the intensity, complete the workout faster. Thus you see in many interval workouts, one's "score" is their time. Getting better over a period of time means decreasing the time for a given workout of this structure.
Second, a given workout can specify movement(s), weight, and workout time, say 20 mins. And the independent variable becomes reps and/or sets. Your score, and axis to increase intensity then is doing more reps/sets.
Third, workout specifies movement, time, rep/sets. Variable / score / axis for improvement is then what weight did you use. Or, if it is some kind of increasing weight ladder within the workout (work up to X rep max)... what weight did you work up to.
Lastly, one can view selection of movement(s) themselves that , put together make up a given workout, holding weight, time, and reps generally constant, as a another axis along which one can move along to avoid a plateau / adaptation to a workout one would see from repeating the same workout structure over and over.
Increases in overall work capacity are achieved by improving performance along all of these different axes, for multiple different exercises / movements, as well as collections of movements that together make up specific "workouts / circuits".
While not necessarily randomizing, but at least varying workout structure along these axes deliver optimal efficiency (most bang for your buck... time and effort spent in the gym) and results when results are measured in terms of GPP[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_physical_preparedness
These are the general principles that Crossfit and other circuit style workouts follow. The key insight these programs use is not falling into one repeated structure of workout done over and over without variation, that most people naively employ when working out in the gym, that is never modified and thus quickly becomes adapted to.
(Go to gym and do X reps for Y sets at Z weight. Take your time, no sense of urgency or goal of completing in as little time as possible. Time thus becomes fixed, as well as the general rep/set structure. Plateau is reached and intensity of workout is low).
Sure you can - the stronger you are, the more energy you burn during an 'all out' sprint. My 'all out' peak wattage and cadence on a bike today is far from what it was when I was at my cycling best, so the load/intensity does vary.
If you don't increase, do you lose any benefits you gained? A few years ago I made a modest workout plan because I wanted to be a bit stronger, a bit more flexible, and have more stamina. I achieved my goals and flipped into a maintenance mode where I basically do just enough exercise to stay where I am. By not pushing for new bests, am I no better off than if I had done nothing?
And the goal is typically to maintain the same intensity throughout, not to get the highest total number. So if you're doing calories on a stationary bike, 10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10 is much better than 15-13-12-10-8-6-5-5 (usually).
Also, from personal experience, try stationary bike for 30 minutes, maintain >60rpm all the time and do 1-3 minutes of "easy" (meaning 1/3 difficulty setting on your bike) and then 1 minute "hard" (100% difficulty setting, still >60rpm), and repeat. I always start sweating like being in a rain after 20 minutes, and this exercise is doing wonders to my anaerobic capacity.
I have difficulty maintaining what is supposedly the proper level of intensity (according to my previous trainer) without throwing up afterwards. It's not exactly a fun and easy way to get in shape.
My problem is more with the tone of a lot of these articles. They come across like a bad advertisement for some new medication. 'Try HIIT and get in shape with only one minute of actual exercise'.
*With warmup and cool down real time is actually closer to 10 minutes. Side effects may include vomiting, crying, and a bad case of Edgar from Men in Black walk.
I can't agree with you more. However, I think this shows the importance of going hard. When I am at the gym and I see these people leisure peddling a bike while reading a book or a magazine, I just don't get it, why bother at all? Peddling slowly for 40 minuets isn't going to do jack. If you go to the gym go all out, push yourself as hard as you can until you body fails. Then rest and push until it fails again. Work through the failure. If you aren't wobbling out of the gym then you failed.
If you aren't wobbling when you leave the gym.... why? Masochism and absolutism around exercise is one of the strangest things to me. What if you need to walk properly the next day because looking like a weirdo at work will get you demoted. Maybe your work demands that you be physically coordinated and not broken, like factory work. Maybe you have kids and need to relax, not destroy yourself. Maybe you're 50 and want to get exercise in but don't want a heart attack. Maybe your knee joints are screwed. Maybe exercise should be fun, or skills based rather than 'exercise until you fall over is the only way'.
People have swore by all sorts of unpleasant fitness regimes in the past which are later shown to be unproductive. Now, we have good reason to believe that you can't be an elite athlete without putting in lots of time, simply because elite athletes can be easily identified; we'd see more elite athlete with short training regimes if it was possible. But, like the incredibly muddied literature on nutrition, it's not at all clear how to optimize moderate (non-elite) exercise for long-term health benefits. We really don't know where the low-hanging fruit is, and its entirely possible that most people are wasting their time.
With regards to HIIT, it's been pitched as 'get fit quick', but without proper training in how to actually push yourself, it's kind of a moot point. My only real argument against any of this is that almost every article focuses on the time of the workout instead of the intensity of it and I think it misleads people who are looking for a more efficient way to get a workout in. The time of the workout is really irrelevant, the intensity involved is what makes it so effective. When people see these quick workouts and attempt to implement them, but don't see these amazing results that are promised, I'm sure it's incredibly frustrating. That could all be avoided by stating 'Hey, these workouts are really, really, really hard and they will be uncomfortable and you will be gasping for air'.
For reference, this is the seminal work about high intensity interval training [2]
[1] It appears as a reference though (ref 28.)
[2] http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/1996/10000/Effect...
The way I've been doing it (I'm no expert), is after pedaling normally for a minute or two, I turn up the resistance and pedal all out for 30 seconds or so, then turn the resistance back down and pedal normally for a few minutes until my heart settles back down, then repeat a few times or so. I go more by distance than time. I try to pedal at least a mile, with high intensity bursts of at least a tenth of a mile or more. It will make you sweat and heart race if you are really going all out.
I currently do 20-30 min of on-off jogging, followed by some light weight exercises for my upper body.
Meanwhile, you can just spin at 150W on a cycle trainer and burn >2 MJ (that's quite a few slices of toast) for every hour you put in.
General Advice:
---) Most importantly, pay attention to how you feel. Always consider that before anything I say. If your body isn't feeling up to it, don't do it: if you get injured you'll be out for a while.
1) You're going to have good and bad days. Just make sure you don't push yourself so hard that you quit. This is for you: go at your pace. Push yourself, but don't make yourself frustrated.
2) You should and can jog or run when you're under the weather, due to a small cold, or hungover, or whatever. Run in the rain. But see ---.
3) If while you're jogging you get a bad cramp, or something feels a bad kind of sore, evaluate. Often you can run through it: you'll loosen up and it'll be okay. But sometimes you're going to hurt yourself. Don't feel bad about stopping. Start off slow. One day cut short is better than a few months because you have a bad sprain.
4) Take breaks. Don't feel bad about taking a day off, as long as YOU KNOW you will be back out there. Listen to your body, and let it heal.
5) Get a lot of sleep, and drink a LOT of water.
The Routine: Alternate days between the below.
Sustained jog: near-constant pace, no walking.
I do a good 3-5 miles (I'm not very in shape: anyone can work up to this easily). On these days I do not push myself, I try a sustained jog. Sometimes I can do a 5k in ~30 minutes fairly easily, other days it takes me over an hour to do 4-5 miles. Point is to reach my goal without stopping. If I get tired, I slow down, but keep jogging.
Running: My goal here is to do 1-2 miles as quickly as I can. I try to set my personal best using an app like Strava. Try to shave off even 5 seconds from that one mile. If I feel good after one mile I do two.
The Mix: I do a run where I'm trying to get a good time on a 5k. This means: sprinting when I can, as much as I can. When I get tired, I jog, but I do not stop running.
Most days are the Sustained Jog. I try to run 5+ times a week. So probably 3-4 of the days are a sustained, 40-70 minute job. I try to do the quick sprint once a week to see how I do, then I try to do the mix once a week as well. Usually I do the mix at the beginning of the week, after a break day (or two). You'll have the most energy then: use it.
Using this, I've seen very sustained and continued improvement with both endurance and speed. I don't know what else I could ask for. The mentality of jogging for me has also helped with motivation: I know I want to get out there, but I'm doing it to be healthy, not for anyone else. So, I do it at my pace. Getting out there is enough.
It's very important to: 1) Make sure you jog as often as your own body will allow 2) Push yourself, but be safe 3) Take breaks, don't get burned out!
I've heard that if you have symptoms from the neck up (sore throat, headache) it's usually okay to run if you're up for it.
But symptoms below the neck (eg coughing or breathing difficulties) then you shouldn't run.
When you think about it, a good portion of the time spent working out is getting ready; gathering your stuff up, getting to the gym, getting your clothes on, warming up, cooling down, taking your clothes off, maybe showering, leaving the gym to go back to wherever you need to be. This all adds up and turns what should be a quick 10-15 minute workout into an hour or more ordeal.
So my new thing is to just work out immediately, in my clothes I'm wearing, in a space that's immediately accessible. I have a rack and weights in my basement and also a free workout space at work, so when I feel like I need a break from work or whatever, I just walk right over and knock out a few sets of the Stronglifts 5x5 routine in whatever I'm wearing at the time. It's very hard to use the excuse that I don't have time for it any more and I'm positive I'm getting just as much benefit.
They found that both groups (long and slow & short and intense) were basically equivalent, especially compared to the control; but they didn't address potential safety concerns or risk of injuries. Surely the group doing the short, intense workouts is at a substantially higher risk of injury.
My biggest question would be, what is the added risk, and given that is it still a good "value proposition" overall?
The sample size (total N = 25) is also kind of low. Interesting nonetheless...
1 - http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
I'm a runner and a basketball player. In basketball, especially at the higher levels, fast twitch muscles and explosive bursts are favored ... which results in quite a bit of weight+sprint training and plyometrics. The common injuries you see are generally torque related: sprains, strains, ligament tears/detachments.
In distance running, it's the opposite: slow twitch muscles and cardiovascular endurance are favored, resulting in some bits of high impact work but mostly just "putting in the miles". In this sport, the common injuries are related to overuse, poor physiodynamics (bad form), and congenital/degenerative problems (mostly joint-related).
The short of it is probably something along these lines: not everyone is cut out to do well at both, so there will probably be a fairly obvious option for part of the population. For the majority who are "average", it probably pays to try both, but I'd insert a caveat that easing into a new training routine is CRITICAL and also that endurance sports carry risks that may not surface immediately but which can have long lasting impacts, so be careful, talk to experts, and pay attention to your body.
I'm not so sure about this. Anecdotally the most common injuries in running and biking are caused by repetition not excessive intensity.
Still, sign me up!
The problem I have seen with intervals training is that few people really go all out.
Just because the duration of high-intensity interval exercise is short (maybe 10-20 minutes vs 45-60 minutes), it doesn't mean it's easy. In my experience, this is the most difficult type of exercise to do because of the amount of mental conditioning it requires to push yourself that hard, especially beyond the first couple of intense intervals.
Like the commenter above stated, many people do not go all out enough to get the maximum desired benefit.
What's new here in this study is how little or how few intense intervals may be required to get a large benefit, which may make it more attainable.
The key is good form and gradually warm up to work weight. I was doing okay DL singles in the #405 range the other day, and it only takes a few sets to get to work weight. If someone can DL #405, they are not adding #10 each set to warmup.
So typically my GPP workouts - pull-ups, curls, direct triceps work etc would take 45 min tops.
PL workouts (5/3/1 or Cube style) would typically take about the same time or longer with less work sets - warm up, rest between the sets etc. The only PL workouts that were shorter than that for me were the PR style workouts where I'd warm up, try for the PR, go home.
Serious lifters (the likes of Elitefts crew) take forever to warm up but then again they are moving some insane weights. We're literally talking going up in quarters from 125 up to 600+ for the bench with 2-3 minute rest intervals once they get above 405 and sometimes would start going up in dimes from there.
This is the problem with exercise in general. You can get in shape doing practically anything if you put in maximum effort. The key is to work hard.
That makes me wonder if I can program my somewhat fancy elliptical. Why don't we have a machine that you can program from your phone yet? It has like 20 built in things, none of which are optimal for what I want to do, why can't I create a new program with an app and upload it to the machine?!
Time to do some research!
I have used the treadmill and just ran. Or the stationary bike. Or when I want to really get at it I'll use the treadmill at a jog for my 'rest' and do my full on with heavy DB snatches or something.
It is really not that complicated, and only requires that someone put in some effort.
As an ex marathon runner, I'd like to add a few comments on my personal experiences which in summary are: interval training helped me achieve my goals, I kept total milage down to avoid injuries, and it would have been impossible for me to do a marathon without the long slow runs every other week.
Here are more details for those that are interested:
I started at age 50 and used the run/walk/run method promulgated by Jeff Galloway[1]. This worked well and I ran my first marathon in 3:48 (and lost about 25 pounds), not bad for 50 year old programmer's first real try at running. The walking phases (about 1 minute out of every 10) seemed kind of amateurish and so I stopped doing the run/walk/run method but found it difficult in the subsequent years to do any better than my first marathon--the run/walk/run method really works.
I finally qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon. I changed my training for this and added more intervals at a track and on hills. I kept the total milage below around 35 miles/week just to prevent overuse injuries to my aging body.
For an event like a marathon, the long, low intensity runs seem very important. They thicken the skin on ones feet preventing blisters, they exercise the small supporting muscles of the legs and feet which eventually adapt to running on pavement for 26 miles without failing, and they give one practice at efficient running style (staying relaxed and not over striding, etc.). Furthermore, just getting a handle on ones long-distance physiology is important, and the long runs give practice with water consumption, salt intake, snacking to avoid bonking, dressing for the weather, and bathroom management.
I'm usually done within 10 minutes, and if I've been out of practice I can certainly feel it the next day.
"Results
Peak oxygen uptake increased after training by 19% in both groups (SIT: 32±7 to 38±8; MICT: 34±6 to 40±8ml/kg/min; p<0.001 for both). Insulin sensitivity index (CSI), determined by intravenous glucose tolerance tests performed before and 72 hours after training, increased similarly after SIT (4.9±2.5 to 7.5±4.7, p = 0.002) and MICT (5.0±3.3 to 6.7±5.0 x 10−4 min-1 [μU/mL]-1, p = 0.013) (p<0.05). Skeletal muscle mitochondrial content also increased similarly after SIT and MICT, as primarily reflected by the maximal activity of citrate synthase (CS; P<0.001). The corresponding changes in the control group were small for VO2peak (p = 0.99), CSI (p = 0.63) and CS (p = 0.97)."
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
This is not how p values are used. See Gelman:
> The p-value does not tell you if the result was due to chance. It tells you whether the results are consistent with being due to chance. That is not the same thing at all.
http://andrewgelman.com/2013/03/12/misunderstanding-the-p-va...
We did a data analysis on several thousand Apple Watch users, looking at whether step count or exercise intensity really drives one key outcome (a lower resting heart rate):
http://blog.cardiogr.am/2016/02/12/do-you-really-need-10000-...
Like this study, our conclusion was that intensity matters most: you need to get your heart rate above 150 to get the best benefit. In our data set, 45 minutes of exercise per week was the "knee" of the curve.
I'd actually love to run a scaled-up version of the NYT study. I think with wearables generating so much data, we really can start to answer questions like: "What is the best workout?" Or perhaps more importantly, "What is the best workout for you?"
I'm so tired of this comment being made about every single study that finds itself on HN. It's a complete misunderstanding about how statistics work. The whole point is to use a small sample to say that something about the larger population.
If it's the first thing that comes to the mind of random HN commenters who haven't even read the actual article, it's probably also going to occur to the experts writing and reviewing the article.
Peer reviewed articles aren't perfect, but it's pretty arrogant to think that the authors and reviewers are so bad at research that you can find problems with them without even reading them.
I've also been regularly using the Calm.com app for meditation practice. (It's less an app and more just a recorded voice walking you through some guided meditation.) But it's been really good, and I feel like it's having a positive effect on my day.
I should also try to keep doing a few minutes on Duolingo. But man, forming habits is hard.
I assume that though many of us exercise for the health effects, many do so specifically for the benefits that exercise can have on our brains. Now after reading this study--well, it seems our entire understanding of the subject is inconclusive.
In the paper the article references, it seems that the sample size is small . n<=9 in all the three groups (Sprint interval training, Moderate intensity , Control) in the test. This should make it really hard to generalize this result across the population , no?
Even in a real gym -- if we subtract out all the time we spend changing our clothes, looking at our phones, talking to our friends, resting between sets, drinking water -- it only adds up to about 5-10 minutes of real exercise.
My average is 26% of the time is workout time and 74% is rest and reconfigure equipment.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_comparisons_problem
This is pretty much true regardless of exercise regime. It tells you nothing about the effectiveness of your regime after that initial exponential bit of learning curve.
It clearly says, the benefits of "x" DURING exercise. In other words, incorporating this one minute superblast into your already active session will lead to the benefit.
Sheesh!
AKA mitochondria - I thought that was an unnecessarily cryptic reference.
The difference is a fit person who is adapted to exercise will need to do more of it to see a benefit.
HIIT "works". Even with fit people. Probably especially with fit people. Think how sprinters train for instance.
It's a bit hyped now of course. I've seen a lot on the web that puts together a standard circuit training type exercise and calls it as "HIIT". Wrong. Nothing wrong with circuits at all, they are great, but you're not going to get to 90% heart rate with planks. :)
"Works" too depends on your goals. "Just HIIT" is better than nothing, I'm sure. But HIIT is (typically) cardio; for best benefit, you would also strength train and do some mobility / flexibility training as well. Diet is an important part of fitness as well.
I'll be honest, I personally think HIIT is a better solution for the modestly fit versus the completely untrained. HIIT is much more physically demanding than a standard circuit or jog. Consequently, I think there is a greater possibility of "overtraining" or over-exerting yourself, perhaps to the point of injury. It really shouldn't be "1 minute per day" for instance because 24 hours is probably not enough time for most people to recover from a legitimate HIIT session.
There's a whole host of literature wrt track and field athletes on this topic.