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Comment by weatherlight | Hacker News Reader

As a professional Athlete, I'll tell you right now, 7 minutes isn't enough.

This will increase happiness and a general sense of well being for about 3 and a half weeks 'til your body adjusts to this level of 'stress' (because it's the same routine every time)

The design is awesome. I could see a interface like this being very useful for elementary yoga poses but this is a far call from an AMAZING work out.

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7 minutes isn't enough, but I think its pretty amazing what you can do in 7 minutes. While there was a good 30 minute of skill-building and warmups first, doing exercises like Fran in Crossfit (Three rounds, 21-15- and 9 reps, for time of: 95-pound Thruster, Pull-ups) is kinda neat.

But you need time for warmup, skill building, etc before that of course.

To be more specific, you need progressive overload to gain strength over time, and you also need more time if you hope to get positive cardio benefits [such as improved heart health and endurance]. The time affects your cardio, the load affects your strength gains.

The minimum amount of time you need for good heart health is listed here: http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/PhysicalActivit...

  AHA Recommendation
  
      At least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity at least 5 days per week for a total of 150
  
      OR

      At least 25 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity at least 3 days per week for a total of 75; or a combination of the two
  
      AND
  
      Moderate to high intensity muscle-strengthening activity at least 2 or more days per week for additional health benefits.

In addition, as your body gets stronger (or more used to a given exercise) you should increase the load, which means either more reps, more sets, or increased "difficulty" (which is usually adding weights, but could be a different bodyweight exercise that targets the same muscle areas but in different ways).

Doing this same set week after week will make you REALLY GOOD at those exercises, and you'll suddenly find yourself blasting through them, which is good. But then you're still weak in a number of other ways.

A discussion about working out... on hacker news. I'm not sure such a discussion would net you very good information :)

Agree with Weatherlight, 7 minutes is much to short to do anything of value. Even if you did a round of Tabata training, I'd still say you need 5 minutes to warm up.

Would changing the routine every week or so help?

What if you programmed in a different programming language every week or so? Roughly the same result. You'd know a little bit about a lot of languages, but never enough to be very productive, and you'd never build anything worth using.

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