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Comment by cwilson | Hacker News Reader

The 7 minute workout is for people who want to feel like they are working out with minimal effort. It's kind of ridiculous. I tried this for a few weeks 4 times a week and saw/felt almost no benefit. Then I upped it to a 30 minute workout using the same set of exercises and saw quite a bit of progress.

That's really the difference. You need your heart-rate pumping for 30 minutes to really see benefits from this, not for 7 minutes. I doubt any "scientific" claims that 7 minutes a few times a week is all the exercise someone needs.

At the very least double it. Do 14 minutes. I remember trying this while out of shape (hadn't done any intense exercise in months) and with 7 minutes I barely broke a sweat. Unless you're morbidly obese you need to do more than this.

If you really want a god exercise buy some weights or go to the gym. Moving around really heavy objects for 30 - 45 minutes is the best bang for your buck workout you can get.

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> The 7 minute workout is for people who want to feel like they are working out with minimal effort.

The 7 minute workout was misinterpreted in the mainstream press. The scientific claims specifically mention a very high intensity workout that most people actually cannot reach. You need to train to get to the level where 7 minute workout makes sense for you.

"Research has demonstrated that improvements can be made in VO2max and insulin sensitivity in as little as 4 minutes of total exercise time in an HICT session. However, it is to be noted that this result often requires working at intensities equivalent to greater than 100% of VO2max. Because most individuals may not be able to execute the program at an intensity significantly greater than 100% of their VO2max, following the established ACSM guidelines for high-intensity exercise of at least 20 minutes is recommended. This may require multiple repetitions (or circuits) of a multistation exercise circuit." http://journals.lww.com/acsm-healthfitness/Fulltext/2013/050...

Try to do the same intensity I do during 7-minute workout if you can't break a sweat ;-)

- 56 push ups - 44 abdominal crunches - 36 chair steps up - 35 squats - 56 triceps dips on chair - 30 lunges - 20 push ups with rotation

(all in 30 seconds)

I thought the point of this exercise was to slowly allow you to raise your intensity to have a real interval training, all while being constrained by time.

56 pushups in 30 seconds? It seems to me the only way to do that is to either a) do them with extremely bad form, b) not go down completely, c) both of those. People like eshlow (author of "Overcoming Gravity") at /r/bodyweightfitness recommend a tempo of 10x1: lowering yourself for one second, staying 0 seconds at the bottom, pushing up as hard and fast as possible (x = explode), and holding for one second at the top. Using this tempo, you can do a max of 15 per 30 seconds.

Yes, it's a different form than you described. I go all the way down and basically go extremely quickly up and down without slowing down the fall phase. My muscles are explosive, I am a good natural fit for tennis, squash, basketball, ice hockey, alpine skiing, sprints, etc. not for endurance (this needs a lot of work). Moreover, I have a very good skeletal maneuverability that doesn't inhibit my movements as is the case with many other muscular people. Also, it took me ~6 months to get to this level. YMMV

I'd like to see a video of your form while doing 56 pushups in 30 seconds.

> with 7 minutes I barely broke a sweat. Unless you're morbidly obese you need to do more than this

I'm a twig who eats averagely and does no exercise other than walking everywhere (around an hour a day) -- I break a sweat after ~3 minutes and collapse on the floor panting at the end of the 7 >_>

I'm pretty sure that it is helping, because now I can actually do the full 7 minutes, where a few months ago I would only manage ~20 seconds of activity out of each 30-second burst before I fell over from muscle pain.

Are you sure that the specific numbers of minutes are what's important? I am by no means an expert, but I was hoping that "push every group of muscles to their limit every day" would be enough...

It really seems like your complaint is more with the types of movements recommended vs. the duration.

At least.. it should be: I've seen and done many exhausting HIIT/Crossfit-style workouts that last only 7 minutes yet wipe out even the most athletic people.

E.g.: here's a 3 minute workout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9pXeLsmQk

How much of this is boot overhead ? maybe with time people can reach 30min level of changes in a focused 7min.

Again, the only people 7 minutes of essentially cardio is going to benefit are people who are insanely out of shape. The second you're just in "ok" shape is the second 7 minutes is basically worthless to to you.

I really hate that this 7 minute workout thing is becoming a trend. It's misleading in its benefits. If everyone writing or talking about it wants to clarify and say it's only beneficial for people who are dangerously out of shape, fine, but otherwise it's stupid. Workout for 30 minutes. Please.

Well, I'm extremely out of shape, and I don't make time for workouts in my schedule.

However, my resistante is to get started ("boot time"), once I'm dressed for a workout (that is, not in a suit or jeans), 7 minutes or 14 or even maybe 30 is not that much of a difference.

Point taken. Why 30min though ? it's usually said that you'd need 45min to reach the deep fat burning. (from little experience, my body really reacted differently after 40minutes)

I just tossed out 30 because it's a nice number and seems reasonable. You are right however that 45 minutes is the standard. I think you'd actually see benefits from doing high intensity cardio for 30 minutes however. At the very least it's so much better than 7.

At the end of the day, if 7 minutes of cardio is all you can stand to do, you're screwed.

If you do Tabata sprints, they will kill you in 4 minutes. So it really depends on how intense you can go instead of the time it takes.

At the end of the day, if 7 minutes of cardio is all you can stand to do, you're screwed.

The patronising attitude isn't going to help anyone who has gotten that far out of shape.

Even if someone is sufficiently unfit that they can't do more than 7 minutes of cardio work in a session, they still have to start somewhere and build up. The alternative in most cases will be their fitness decaying even further.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of reasons people might be that unfit. Some will just be lazy. Others might be recovering from a serious injury or illness, and just being able to walk for five minutes to get to the shops unassisted is a big achievement.

People who are insanely out of shape might not even be able to do all of these exercises (particularly the tricep dip one).

I did the tricep dip fairly often (deep and slow) and saw no changes (except my hand burning). Weird.

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