Researcher Study Just How Little Exercise You Need. Awesome!

Researcher Study Just How Little Exercise You Need. Awesome.

Posted on February 18, 2012 by lowcarbconfidential

Now here’s some researchers an exercise-averse person like me has gotta love.

“Millions of Americans don’t engage in much exercise, if they complete any at all and asked why, a majority of respondents, in survey after survey, say, ‘I don’t have time.’ Now Gretchen Reynolds reports that instead of wondering justhow much exercise people really need in order to gain health and fitness, a group of scientists in Canada are turning that issue on its head and asking, how little exercise do we need to maintain fitness and the answer appears to be, a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to work a bit. Most people have heard of intervals, or repeated, short, sharp bursts of strenuous activity, interspersed with rest periods. Almost all competitive athletes strategically employ a session or two of interval training every week to improve their speed and endurance. Researchers have developed a version of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) that involves one minute of strenuous effort, at about 90 percent of a person’s maximum heart rate (which most of us can estimate, very roughly, by subtracting our age from 220), followed by one minute of easy recovery. The effort and recovery are repeated 10 times, for a total of 20 minutes and the interval training is performed twice a week. Despite the small time commitment of this modified HIIT program, after several weeks of practicing it, both the unfit volunteers and the cardiac patients showed significant improvements in their health and fitness. ‘A growing body of evidence demonstrates that high-intensity interval training can serve as an effective alternate to traditional endurance-based training, inducing similar or even superior physiological adaptations in healthy individuals and diseased populations, at least when compared on a matched-work basis.’”

I lifted the above from Slashdot, a respected site that has been around forever. It’s well worth visiting the actual post as the commenters typically rise above the average Neanderthal comment and usually add something of value to the post subject.
A New York Times blog posting you can find here goes into more detail about the research, where cardiac patients(!) were asked to exercise ‘bat-shit crazy’ (technical term) for 1 minute then rest for 1 minute – and repeat 10 times. They did this twice a week. The researchers were amazed at just how much good this did them – and the patients basically said: yeah, it sucks, but at least it doesn’t last all that long.
What surprises me is that the researchers didn’t end up killing a bunch of cardiac patients.
This probably isn’t news to a number of readers – the Paleo and Primal diet folks have said for years that this sort of punctuated exercise is probably what Grok (their name for the archetype caveman they strive to emulate) did – and that’s what we were designed for.
Unfortunately, I am still sitting on my ass instead of doing it. I bought an interval training timer a while back – it’s somewhere. Like the guy who watches Food Network while eating TV dinners, or home repair shows while his own home repairs are neglected, I am still a voyeur of exercise – not a participant.
Luckily, I am expert in giving myself excuses – I’ll leave you mine just in case you need some for yourself:

• “Well, I should really consult with my doctor first – you should consult your physician before any exercise program – right?”
• ”What do doctors know? I might drop dead anyway !” (to use after visiting the doctor)
• “Spring is around the corner – I’ll start it then.”
• “I have to find my interval timer I bought. I’ll have to look for that later.”
• “I don’t have any exercise clothes that fit me – I’ll have to buy some first.”
• “I always feel like an idiot when I exercise.”

Let me know if you have any good excuses – I’ll add them to my collection.
My favorite one – a quote from somebody or other – that I always pull out if someone asks me if I exercise is this:

Whenever I get the urge to exercise I lie down until the feeling passes.

And let’s not forget the late John Candy’s exercise sketch from SCTV:

Matt Metzgar: Sprint less, Variations of Sprint 8

Matt Metzgar: Sprint less, Variations of Sprint 8

February 22, 2012

Variations of Sprint 8

Following up on the last post, I think there are many ways to get the benefits of sprinting. I thought it was interesting that in the video associated with the last post, Mercola stated that he only did Sprint 8 once per week instead of the recommended 3 times per week.
Along those same lines, Clarence Bass recently wrote about interval training. He writes:
"My concern, however, is that three hard interval sessions a week is too much for most people to sustain; they’ll do it—even enjoy it—under supervision (as in the Little study), but they’re not likely to keep doing it on their own. Hard training every workout is asking for trouble; it is neither fun nor productive. My own experience is that one or at most two hard interval workouts a week is all I can tolerate effectively, especially in the context of a balanced program of strength and aerobic training."
Clarence has been doing intervals for decades, and I put a lot of stock into what he has to say.
My own experience mirrors this point of view. When I've tried to do the full Sprint 8 programs 3 times per week, I can do it for a month or so, but then I burn out. Conversely, I can do hard intervals once a week and continue month after month.
So we know sprinting once a week is sustainable, but what are the other options? Chris over at Conditioning Research (who by the way just released a new book titled Hillfit) pointed to a study the other month about a minimalist sprinting routine.
Here is an interesting part of the study:
"Several recent studies have suggested that high-intensity interval training (HIT), a training model involving a series of 30-second ‘all-out’ cycling sprints (i.e. Wingate sprints) with 4 minutes of rest/recovery between each bout, may provide a time-efficient strategy for inducing adaptations that are similar to traditional cardiorespiratory training (Gibala et al. 2006; Burgomaster et al. 2005; Burgomaster et al. 2008; Rakobowchuk et al. 2008; Burgomaster et al. 2007; Trilk et al. 2010).
Furthermore, we have recently demonstrated the beneficial effects of HIT on insulin sensitivity (Babraj et al. 2009), a finding that has since been confirmed by others (Little et al. 2011; Richards et al. 2010; Whyte et al. 2010). However, whilst these observations are interesting from a human physiological perspective, their translation into physical activity recommendations for the general population is uncertain for two reasons. Firstly, the relatively high exertion associated with ‘classic’ HIT sessions requires strong motivation and may be perceived as too strenuous for many sedentary individuals (Hawley and Gibala 2009). Secondly, although a typical HIT session requires only 2-3 minutes of actual sprint exercise, when considered as a feasible exercise session including a warm-up, recovery intervals and cool-down, the total time commitment is more than 20 minutes, reducing the time efficiency(Garber et al. 2011). Thus, there is scope for further research to determine whether the current HIT protocol can be modified to reduce levels of exertion and time-commitment whilemaintaining the associated health benefits."
In short, they suggest that the benefits of sprinting could be obtained with a reduced workload.
Here is their formulation:
"It has consistently been shown that a single 30-second Wingate sprint can reduce muscle glycogen stores in the vastus lateralis by 20-30% (Esbjornsson-Liljedahl et al. 1999; Parolin et al. 1999; Esbjornsson-Liljedahl et al. 2002; Gibala et al. 2009). What is intriguing, however, is that glycogenolysis is only activated during the first 15 seconds of the sprint and is then strongly attenuated during the final 15 seconds (Parolin et al. 1999). Moreover, activation of glycogenolysis is inhibited in subsequent repeated sprints (Parolin et al. 1999). This suggests that the traditional HIT protocol (4-6×30 seconds) may be unnecessarily strenuous as similar glycogen depletion may be achieved using 1-2 sprints of shorter duration (15-20 seconds). In turn, this would make the training sessions more time-efficient, less strenuous and more applicable to the largely sedentary general population."
Thus, they are saying that traditional sprinting programs may be overkill in a way, and that you could deplete glycogen just as well by doing 1-2 sprints of 15 to 20 seconds.
This I think leads to a real insight: if you cut the number and duration of sprints (but keep the intensity), then I could see how you could be able to do this workout more frequently. So while 3 days per week of 6 to 8 30-second sprints may be too much for many people, 3 days per week of 1 to 2 15-second sprints may produce similar benefits and be more appealing to people.

Shocking Before and After Transformation in 5 Hours - EXPOSED!

Uploaded by furiouspete123 on Feb 5, 2012

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This transformation is whats possible in less than 5 hours. I'm not stating anywhere in this video that supplements or programs (mentioned or not) don't work. I'm simply showing what is possible.
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Hyperplasia - Wikipedia

Hyperplasia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hyperplasia (or "hypergenesis") means increase in number of cells/proliferation of cells. It may result in the gross enlargement of an organ and the term is sometimes mixed with benign neoplasia/ benign tumor.

Hyperplasia is a common preneoplastic response to stimulus. Microscopically cells resemble normal cells but are increased in numbers. Sometimes cells may also be increased in size (hypertrophy).^[1] Hyperplasia is different from hypertrophy in that the adaptive cell change in hypertrophy is an increase in cell size, whereas hyperplasia involves an increase in the number of cells.

Simple illustration to show the difference between hyperplasia and hypertrophy.