The Super-Short Workout and Other Fitness Trends - NYTimes.com

The Super-Short Workout and Other Fitness Trends - NYTimes.com

By Gretchen Reynolds

December 31, 2014 12:01 am
December 31, 2014 12:01 am

Photo

Credit Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times, Willie Davis for The New York TImes and Buda Mendes/Getty Images

The big story in exercise science this year was the super-short workout.

In one particularly
useful study from May, scientists found that three brief sessions per
day of interval-style exercise — consisting of one minute of brisk
walking followed by another minute of strolling, repeated six times —
allowed people at risk of diabetes to control their blood sugar better
than a continuous 30-minute walk.

Just as important, these short “exercise snacks,”
as the scientists called the condensed sessions, were more popular with
the study’s participants than the single, longer walk, the scientists
reported. They liked finishing quickly.

That sentiment likewise explains the popularity of the “Scientific 7-Minute Workout,” which I first wrote about in 2013 and updated this fall with an advanced version and a related app. Similarly, many of you were intrigued by a July study detailing how running as little as five minutes a day
might add years to someone’s life span. “Most people can fit in five
minutes a day” of exercise, one of the study’s authors told me.

But should even that time commitment seem excessive, scientists obligingly developed and tested a one-minute workout
this year, with three 20-second intervals of very hard exercise leading
to robust improvements in the endurance and health of the study’s
overweight, out-of-shape volunteers.

There is naturally a
catch to such truncated workouts, however. In each of these studies, the
exertion involved was intense. The volunteers panted and strained,
albeit briefly. Their strenuous exercise seemed to invoke “more potent”
physiological responses than gentler activity, one of the researchers
involved in the exercise-snacking study said.

A nifty June study helps to explain why. In that experiment,
mice that were pushed to run hard on running wheels developed
distinctly different biochemical responses within their muscle cells
than other animals and these differences translated into larger,
healthier muscles. The study’s lesson, its lead author concluded, is
that sometimes you need to “get out of your body’s comfort zone.” But
only, thankfully, for a minute or five.

Doctor Says 20-Second Workout Can Make You Slimmer and Healthier | ABC News Blogs - Yahoo

Doctor Says 20-Second Workout Can Make You Slimmer and Healthier | ABC News Blogs - Yahoo



For many of us, exercising can be a chore, but what if your workout could be over in just 20 seconds?

Dr.
Michael Mosley believes that three 20-second bursts of high-intensity
training, three times per week, can make people skinnier and healthier.

He calls the concept "fast exercise," and describes the approach in his new book, also titled "Fast Exercise."

Scroll Down to See Quick Workouts from 'Fast Exercise'

It's the latest in the apparent trend of rapid workouts. First, there was the seven-minute workout, then the four-minute plan.

ABC News correspondent Juju Chang met Mosley at Reebok Sports Club in New York to go through the paces of the routine.

Watch Dr. Mosley Explain the 'Fast Diet'

Mosley
explained that the key to effective, high intensity workouts are doing
short bursts of intense exercise. He said they seem to be much more
effective for weight loss as well as for insulin resistance.

Science
shows that what's beneficial about exercise is the stress and intensity
of the workout, not the duration, Mosley said. The benefits of this
type of exercise regimen include reduced risks of cancer and diabetes.

For Mosley, it's personal.

'Brutal' 7 Minutes a Day May Be Enough for Beach Body

"Two
years ago I discovered I was a diabetic," Mosley said. "I was a bit
overweight. That moved me into … fast exercise. And now I'm 20 pounds
lighter and my blood sugars are completely normal. I've gone from
diabetic to normal."

Mosley is also the bestselling author of "The Fast Diet,"
which outlines a weight-loss plan in which participants can eat what
they want for five days a week, but must fast for two non-consecutive
days.

As a guinea pig for his own research, Mosley says he doesn't need a fancy gym, or even gym clothes.

"Stair running is a fabulous form of exercise," he said. "You can do it in any building which has three floors."

But can a few minutes a week really work?

Daniel Rohanna teaches high-intensity workouts at Reebok. He understands that people have a lot going on in their lives.

'Greetings, Chubby Human': Weight-Loss App Shames Users

"For
a lot of people it's 'I've got kids, I've got my job, I've got to get
groceries.' It's really nice to get in, get out, hit it hard and I'm
done, but I don't think 10 minutes, three times a week is going to be
enough," he said.

Mosley said scientists all over the world are finding health benefits from doing better workouts in less time.

Try These Workouts From 'Fast Exercise'

*You should consult your physician before starting this or any exercise routine.

The Bare Minimum. 40 seconds hard exercise (2 x 20 seconds) Total - 4-6 minutes, including recovery.

Unbelievably,
there is evidence that just 40 seconds of intense activity can make a
difference. In 2011, Dr. Niels Vollaard and colleagues at Bath
University did a study in which they asked fifteen healthy but sedentary
young men and women to try something they called REHIT (reduced­
exertion high-intensity training) for six weeks.

He started them
off in the first week with a couple of minutes of gentle cycling, then
one 10-second burst of in­tense cycling followed by a couple of minutes
of cool down. In weeks two and three, each exercise session consisted of
a warm-up, fifteen seconds of all-out sprinting, a couple of minutes of
recovery, another fifteen seconds of all-out sprinting, then the gentle
cool down.

For the final three weeks they cranked it up so each
ex­ercise session consisted of two 20-second flat-out sprints separated
by a couple of minutes of recovery.

Despite the fact that over the
six weeks the volunteers had done less than ten minutes of hard
exercise, both the men and the women showed significant improvements in
their aerobic fitness - with a measure known as VO2max, the maximum
volume of oxygen used by the body, up 15% and 12% respec­tively. When it
came to insulin sensitivity, there was a gender difference: the men's
sensitivity improved by 28% while the women's did not improve.

Vollaard
is currently carrying out further studies to see if this gender
difference is real and also to see if people with metabolic syndrome and
diabetes get similar improvements.

He is also keen to investigate
in the future whether a single burst of 20 seconds done three times a
week makes a measur­able difference. If you are only doing a few bursts,
20 seconds seems to be the minimum time for a burst that will make a
difference.

Extreme Weight-Loss Success Stories

The
basic principle here is to push yourself in two 20-second bursts. The
most obvious activity to choose is cycling, since that was what they did
in the trials; if you are doing it indoors, you will need an exercise
bike with variable resistance on which you can crank up the intensity
mechanically; and, if cycling outside, you will need to find a hill,
preferably quite a steep one, and use gravity to increase your workload.
But in principle, any of the activities above will work fine. In the
case of running, you will need to find some way of cranking up the
resistance for your 20-second spurts - either mechanically, on a
treadmill in the gym, or by using a hill if you are outside.

- Start off with a couple of minutes of gentle pedaling/running/swimming.

- When you feel ready, speed up and work your body as hard as you can for 20 seconds then slow down.

-
Repeat the sprint after you've had a couple of minutes of gentle
pedaling/jogging/walking to recover. Recovery time is important.

In
total, the bare minimum should take less than ten minutes. Mosely likes
to do it on an exercise bike (see box below) and, now that he's more
used to it, he does it in less than four minutes by minimizing warm-up
and cool down and by cutting his gentle pedaling to about a minute.

If
you are very unfit or have never tried HIT before, it may be worth
slowly building up the sprints from 2 x 10 seconds to 2 x 20 seconds.
Once you have mastered 2 x 20 seconds you may want to add on another
20-second sprint which, along with the recommended recovery period, will
add another couple of minutes to your regime.

First find a quiet
stairwell in a building with at least four full floors. If you are
unfit, you may want to spend a few weeks walking up the four flights
before attempting any­thing more adventurous.

How to Cram a Workout Into 4 Minutes

When you feel up to it, try bounding up the stairs for 20 seconds. And I mean bounding.
If you are a beginner, this should be long enough to make you breathe
heavily and to feel the buildup of fatigue in your thighs. As you get
fitter you will find that you need to run for longer, up more stairs, to
get the same feeling.

Ideally take the lift down to where you
started, or in a tall building just pause for 1-2 minutes to catch your
breath before bounding up another few floors.

The 30-Second Sprinter. 2 minutes hard exercise. Total - 16 minutes, including 14 minutes recovery

This
is similar to the 20-second sprints that we have just described, except
that you will need a longer recovery pe­riod between sprints because
going from 20 seconds to 30 seconds of all-out sprinting is much more
demanding.

If you are not used to HIT, you should start gradually,
preferably by working your way through a 20-second re­gime first, then
trying 2 x 30 seconds and building up from there.

Make time to do a
couple of minutes of warm-up and en­sure you are mentally ready before
starting your first sprint. Between each sprint pedal gently for 3-4
minutes to recover (you will need it).

6 Ways to Work Out at Your Desk Now

This
regime is based on the original HIT studies, which were done in Canada
and were called SIT (sprint interval training). The Canadians found that
doing four 30-second sprints (interspersed with a few minutes of
recovery) three times a week led to similar improvements in fitness as
run­ning or cycling at a steady speed for many hours a week.

30-second sprint/bike:
4 x 30-second sprints on a bike. Make time to do a couple of minutes
warm-up before start­ing your first sprint. Between each sprint take 3-4
minutes to recover by pedaling at a gentle pace (you will need it).
Then take at least 2 minutes to cool down.

30-second sprint/run:
4 x 30-second running sprints up a hill. Warm up by running at a gentle
pace to your chosen hill. Then sprint for 30 seconds up the hill; walk
down or around for a few minutes, then do it again. And again. And
again. Finish by jogging slowly home. Stretch if you like.

30-second sprint/swim:
If you like swimming, do the first few lengths at a gentle pace. When
you are ready, try swim­ming 25 meters flat out (or count to 30 in your
head). Take a bit of a breather, then continue gently swimming a couple
more lengths. Then do another sprint. Repeat four times. Finish with a
very gentle couple of lengths.

The 60-Second Workout

2½ minutes hard exercise, total - 10-11 minutes, including 8 minutes recovery

This
is one of my favorite approaches and a format I have used for many
years. It's very simple: the basic principle is to alternate 60-second
bursts of activity with 90-second recovery periods - for example, 1
minute on, 1½ minutes off. It's wonderfully flexible: it can be done
with any of the activities listed above, like cycling, running,
swimming, and can be scaled down or up according to what you require.

Woman Films Herself Through 100 Days of Workouts

You
might think that 60 seconds of HIT has to be tougher than 30 seconds,
but this version is not. The 60-second work­out evolved out of work done
by the sports science team at McMaster University when they were trying
to find an ef­fective but "gentler" version of the challenging
30-second Sprinter. The key difference is that you don't push yourself
quite as hard. Instead of going flat out, you exercise for a minute at
about 90% of your best effort, aiming to push your heart rate up to
around 80% of your maximum heart rate (see section on measuring the
impact of exercise at the back of the book) by the end of the first
minute. (To find out your HR max, see the reference section at the
back.)

In the original studies they asked the volunteers to do 10 x
1-minute bursts of HIT with 90 seconds recovery in between each burst.
This is what I do. More recently re­searchers from Metapredict (a group
of exercise academics) have begun testing a less demanding variant,
involving a maximum of 5 x 60-second bursts alternated with 90-second
recovery periods.

The less fit should definitely start with three
bursts; if you are super keen, and really want to push your limits, you
can do the full 10 (this is effectively the Roger Bannister ver­sion,
and particularly beneficial if you are preparing for an endurance
event). Our recommendation, if you are basically quite fit, is that you
aim for a steady five. So:

- Two minutes of warm-up.

- 5 x 60-second bursts of activity, with 90 seconds recovery between each burst.

- One minute of cool down.

The Fat Burner: 8 minutes hard exercise, total - 20 minutes, including 12 minutes recovery

This
workout involves a repetitive cycle of eight seconds of intense
activity alternated with twelve seconds of recovery, and is only really
suitable for an exercise bike. It is based on two key Australian studies
by Stephen Boutcher, which showed that HIT could lead to significant
fat loss.

After a brief warm-up, you cycle hard against resistance
for eight seconds, then gently for twelve, then hard against resistance
again for eight seconds, and gently for twelve, and so on.

Copyright
2013 by Parenting Matters Limited and Peta Bee from FASTEXERCISE
published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Also Read

Eat light, pedal fast - Michael Mosley: The Science Show - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Michael Mosley: eat light, pedal fast - The Science Show - ABC Radio National (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Michael Mosley: eat light, pedal fast

• Download audio
• show transcript

Saturday 19 October 2013 12:47PM

 

 

 Image:
Michael Mosley

 

Michael Mosley is a journalist, physician, producer and television
presenter. He has produced television programs where he is the guinea
pig. In Eat, Fast And Live Longer, he experiments with a simple
diet which has people eating lightly 2 days each week. For him, it
worked well, perhaps too well. He lost 12Kg and has now modified the
diet to eating lightly 1 day each week. But there are other benefits in
addition to weight loss. The diet helps cholesterol and can eliminate
diabetes. In The Truth About Exercise, Mosley discovers the
benefits of exercise can be found in short bursts of high intensity
exertion, rather than hours slogging on treadmills or running.

A few short, intensive bursts of exercise each week can bring dramatic benefits.

Michael Mosley is on the fast track to fitness | The AustralianThe Australian
January 18, 2014

Michael Mosley says a few short, intensive bursts of exercise each week can bring dramatic benefits.

A YEAR ago I wrote a book that changed my life. A middle-aged
medical journalist, I found myself the unlikely author of an
international bestseller, The Fast Diet, and the recipient of a lot of grateful emails. 

Now I'm hoping to do it again with Fast Exercise. Fast Exercise is
based on a surprising and radical claim - that you can get fitter,
healthier and better toned with just a few minutes of intense exercise a
day, three days a week.


For those who missed it, the Fast Diet - often known as "the 5:2" -
is based on the idea of intermittent fasting,
also known as IF. Instead of aiming for slow, steady calorie
restriction - the approach recommended by sensible dietitians that most
people find impossible to stick to - with IF you slash your calories,
but for only a couple of days a week (hence the catchphrase the 5:2).
Although it may sound faddish, intermittent fasting is based on careful
scientific studies (mainly animal, but some human) that suggest it not
only leads to weight loss but has multiple other health benefits.

I was convinced enough by the science to make a documentary and then
to write a book. I remember, shortly after we delivered the manuscript a
year ago, pointing out to my co-author, Mimi Spencer, that there are
about 50,000 diet books available online and the odds of us making an
impact were, to say the least, slim. Mimi, who is an incurably
optimistic Tigger to my Eeyore, was convinced we would succeed because
our approach was offering not just a science-based diet but a modern
take on an old tradition. Fasting, after all, has a long history. "It
will be huge," she announced, as we sipped our calorie-free tea. She was
right. As well as numerous doctors, politicians and a Nobel
prizewinner, there have been endorsements from the likes of food writer
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and actor Benedict Cumberbatch.



One of the most striking things about the Fast Diet is how many men not only
embrace it but are happy to tell the world they are doing it. I think it
helps that "fasting" sounds challenging. It is also simple and
straightforward, which again seems to appeal to men. Mimi's father is
certainly a poster boy for this approach. Over the past few months he
has lost more than 16kg and has had to buy new trousers. This is
something I can identify with as I have lost 10kg, a few inches around
my middle and found that most of my clothes no longer fit. I hate
shopping but fortunately I have sons whose clothes I can now borrow (I
haven't told them). I'm also wearing suits from 20 years ago that I
never got around to throwing out.

Although I'm pleased with the weight loss, for me intermittent
fasting was never about getting slimmer.

Eighteen months ago I went to my GP with a suspicious mole and
she suggested I have my blood tested. The mole turned out to be benign
but the blood results were not. I had a fasting glucose of 7.3 mmol/l,
which made me diabetic, and a "bad" cholesterol (LDL) of 5.5 mmol/l (the
recommended level is less than 3). I shouldn't have been surprised
because my father, who struggled with his weight all his life, died of
complications from diabetes in his early 70s. I'd never felt the need to
diet because I had never seen myself as overweight. Yes, I weighed in
at 85kg, but when I looked in the mirror I saw someone slim, ageing
well, almost athletic. This wasn't simply a case of middle-aged
delusion; the surplus fat really was invisible. My fat wasn't sitting
under my skin, bulging out in unseemly places. It was visceral fat,
buried deep inside my body. I went for an MRI and saw not just the odd
dab but litres of the stuff inside my abdomen, coating and clogging my
internal organs. Visceral fat is particularly unhealthy because it is
metabolically active, increasing your risk of diabetes and heart
disease. It is surprisingly common, even in people of normal weight.

Rather than start on a conventional diet, I decided to try intermittent
fasting. Unlike proper, hardcore fasting where you live for days or even
weeks on few if any calories, IF involves a few days a week when you
eat about a quarter of your normal calories. Being a television
presenter with a taste for self-experimentation, I naturally made a
documentary about my adventures. In the course of making Eat, Fast, Live Longer I
came across different ways you can do intermittent fasting. The
best-studied approach and the one that is likely to lead to the most
rapid weight loss is ADF, alternate day fasting. As the name implies,
you cut your calories every other day. I tried ADF but found it hard
going and settled instead on a 5:2 pattern, cutting my calories two days
a week. If you don't splurge on your non-fast days then this should
lead to a weight loss of almost half a kilogram a week.

Dr Michelle Harvie and Professor Tony Howell of the Genesis Breast Cancer
Prevention Centre, who have done proper clinical studies comparing two
days a week of calorie restriction against a standard diet, found that
those on the two-day diet lost nearly twice as much fat (about 4kg) as
those on a standard diet, as well as seeing greater improvements in key
biochemical markers such as insulin sensitivity. Intermittent fasting
won't suit everyone, but it worked for me. Not only did I lose a lot of
fat (10cm off my waist, 5cm off my neck) but I also saw huge
improvements in my fasting glucose and cholesterol levels, both of which
are now in the healthy range.



Yet even when I was doing IF I knewit was not enough.
I realised that if I was going to maximise my
chances of living into a healthy old age then I needed to do more
exercise. The trouble is I hate running, jogging or going to the gym.
Instead, I've taken up a very different approach, pioneered by (among
others) Professor Jamie Timmons of Loughborough University. Jamie
introduced me to HIT, high intensity training. Like IF, HIT is a radical
solution to a modern problem, in this case how to get the most from a
workout in the least possible time. HIT also eschews the "moderation in
all things" approach. Instead of plodding away on a treadmill or cycling
at a steady, sensible pace, with HIT you do a few extremely short
bursts of exercise, intense enough to get your heart rate soaring,
interspersed with a couple of minutes of recovery. A few such bursts
(lasting anywhere between 20 seconds and one minute) done three times a
week can produce dramatic changes. Numerous trials have shown that HIT
not only makes people aerobically fitter in a remarkably short time but
also metabolically fitter. In particular, it improves the body's ability
to process the glucose surge you get after a meal. As someone with a
genetic propensity to develop diabetes, this is particularly important.


Early versions of HIT were tough, best suited to those who were already
athletic. Modified versions have recently been tested on people who are
older, heavier and in less good health, such as those with heart
disease. Done properly it is safe, effective and surprisingly enjoyable.
It burns more fat than conventional exercise and, best of all, it's
over in less time than it takes to drive to the gym. A self-confessed
couch potato, I've been doing short versions of high-intensity training
for almost a year, with impressive results. During that time I teamed up
with journalist Peta Bee. Despite the fact that we have very different
attitudes to exercise (she loves it, I loathe it) and she started out
super-fit (I wasn't), we bonded over a mutual enthusiasm for HIT. We
hope HIT will be a hit.

High intensity exercise for 6 minutes a week - how to lose weight and prevent diabetes

High intensity exercise for 6 minutes a week - how to lose weight and prevent diabetes

December 13, 2010 in Diabesity | 38 comments

 Print This Post

I believe regular movement and exercise is essential to health. As Stephan Guyenet pointed out in a recent blog post, our paleolithic ancestors had a different word for exercise: “life“. They naturally spent a lot of time outdoors in the sun, walking, hunting, gathering, and performing various other physically-oriented tasks. They had no concept of this as “exercise” or “working out”. It was just life.

But while exercise contributes to health in several different ways, it’s not very effective for weight loss. Or, more specifically, I should say that low-intensity, “cardio” – which is how most people exercise – is not effective for weight loss.

Why cardio doesn’t work

How could this be? There are three main reasons:

• caloric burn during exercise is generally small;
• people who exercise more also tend to eat more (which negates the weight regulating effect of exercise); and,
• increasing specific periods of exercise may cause people to become more sedentary otherwise.

In an example of the first reason, a study following women over a one-year period found that in order to lose one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of fat, they had to exercise for an average of 77 hours. That’s a lot of time on the treadmill just to lose 2 pounds!

In an example of the second reason, a study found that people who exercise tend to eat more afterwards, and that they tend to crave high-calorie foods. The title of this study says it all: “Acute compensatory eating following exercise is associated with implicit hedonic wanting for food.” I love it when researchers have a sense of humor.

In an example of the third reason, one study assigned 34 overweight and obese women to an exercise program for 8 weeks. Fat loss at the end of the study was an average of 0.0kg. Not very impressive. But the researchers noticed that some women did lose weight, while others actually gained. What was the difference? In the women that didn’t lose weight, the increase in specific periods of exercise corresponded with a decrease in overall energy expenditure. Translation: they were more likely to be couch potatoes when they weren’t exercising, which negated the calorie-burning effect of their workouts.

If you’re still not convinced, the Cochrane group did a review of 43 individual studies on exercise for weight loss. Study length ranged from 3 to 12 months, and exercise sessions lasted on average 45 minutes with a frequency of 3-5 times per week. The results? On average, the additional weight loss from exercise averaged about 1 kg (2.2 pounds). Meh. Assuming they worked out for 45 minutes 4x/wk over 6 months, that means they had to exercise 69 hours to lose that 1 kg.

The purpose of this rather long introduction is simply to point out that low-intensity, “cardio” exercise is spectacularly ineffective for weight loss. But that doesn’t meal all types of exercise aren’t effective.

High-intensity intermittent training (HIIT)

HIIT is a type of exercise performed in short bursts (intervals) at high-intensity. Several studies have been done comparing HIIT to low-intensity, steady-state (“chronic cardio”, as Mark Sisson calls it) exercise, and HIIT has been shown to be superior in nearly every meaningful marker.

In this study, one group was assigned to “chronic cardio”, while the other was assigned to intervals of 8-second sprints. After 15 weeks, the researchers concluded:

Both exercise groups demonstrated a significant improvement (P less than 0.05) in cardiovascular fitness. However, only the HIIE group had a significant reduction in total body mass (TBM), fat mass (FM), trunk fat and fasting plasma insulin levels.

A pair of studies done at McMaster University found that “6-minutes of pure, hard exercise once a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity“, according to the June 6, 2005 CNN article reporting on the study.

The study itself was published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, and it revealed that HIIT resulted in unique changes in skeletal muscle and endurance capacity that were previously believed to require hours of exercise each week.

A follow-up study confirmed the results. Despite the fact that the more conventional endurance exercise group spent 97.5 percent more time engaged in exercise, both groups of subjects improved to the same degree. The group that exercised 97.5 percent more received no additional benefit whatsoever from doing so. Considering the wear-and-tear and increased risk of injury associated with that much more exercise, there’s absolutely no point to doing “chronic cardio” when you can receive the same benefits with a fraction of the time and risk by doing HIIT.

The Cochrane study I linked to earlier in the article also found that high-intensity exercise was superior to “chronic cardio”. In particular, the researchers found that high-intensity exercise led to a greater decrease in fasting blood glucose levels than low-intensity exercise.

Why high-intensity exercise is better

In his excellent book on high-intensity strength training, Body By Science, Dr. Doug McGuff explains that high-intensity training is superior to chronic cardio because it produces a greater stimulus and thus more effectively empties the muscles and liver of glucose. This stimulus can last several days with HIIT, as opposed to just a few hours with low-intensity training.


HIIT also activates hormone-sensitive lipase (HSL), which mobilizes fatty acids for energy use. This means that during HIIT, both glucose and fatty acids will be burned, leading to greater fat loss and restoration of insulin sensitivity.

High-intensity strength training: best of all?

Both high-intensity running or bicycling sprints and high-intensity strength training are effective. But I believe high-intensity strength training is probably a better choice for most, simply because the wear-and-tear and risk of injury is lower – especially if the strength-training is performed using weight machines as described in Body By Science.
This is, in fact, the method of training I’ve been doing since April of this year. I admit I was somewhat skeptical about it all before I read Body By Science. But the research and the physiology was convincing, so I decided to give it a try.

The results have been incredible. My workout varies in length between 5 and 9 minutes a week. That’s right, I said minutes. With only a few exceptions, I’ve increased the amount of weight I can lift, the time I can lift it, or both, with each successive workout. My strength has increased and my physique is, if anything, better than it was when I was lifting 3x/week for much longer periods.



Aside from the Body By Science (BBS) weight workout which I perform once a week, I stay active on a daily basis. I ride my bike or walk to work or to do errands, and rarely drive my car. I go on walks in the woods or on the beach. I surf when time permits. But I don’t do anything else for “exercise”. This routine not only feels great, it fits very well with my lifestyle and it is completely sustainable. It doesn’t feel like an effort at all.

If you’re interested in this kind of training, I’d recommend picking up a copy of Body By Science and checking out their excellent blog. You can post your weekly workout results and get help and suggestions from the very knowledgeable community there – including both authors of the book, Doug McGuff & John Little, and other experienced trainers and enthusiasts.

Another option that may be more accessible for some is Fred Hahn’s The Slow Burn Fitness Revolution. Fred also has a website and blog worth checking out.

Final note to slackers: the popular excuse of “I don’t have time to exercise” is no longer valid. You’ve got 6 minutes a week to do this. I know you do.

Tagged as: body by science, diabetes, high, intensity, obesity, strength, training, weight loss

Eat Less, Move mo........wha? Wait a minute

Kindke's Health Notes: Eat Less, Move mo........wha? Wait a minute

Thursday, 29 March 2012

Eat less, Move more, pretty much everyone on the blogosphere is now almost universally agreed that to lose weight, you need to control calories in, calories out.

Horizone BBC had this episode a few weeks ago about exercise, in it, they show that the benefits of exercise can be achieved with as little as 3 minutes per week. What did they do? They had a guy pedal on the stationary cycle at pretty much maximum intensity for 20 seconds, let him rest a few minutes, then repeat, for a total of 1 minute spent exercising. Its referred to as HIIT in the gym goers world ( probably because you feel like youve been HIIT in the head after doing it ).

HIIT = High Intensity Interval Training.

Just do this 3 times per week, and you get all the benefits of savy gym rat.

What benefits are we talking about? Weight loss? Well no. In the show they actually perform another experiment where the reporter runs around for a few minutes and becomes completely out of breath, he is then told that he was burning on average, 16 calories per minute. Thats not even a teaspoon of sugar!

Later on in the show, we learn that the reporter's 3 minutes per week exercise did actually help him in some way, he scored slightly better in a OGTT. Thats it! Thats the REAL benefit of exercise, improved glucose tolerance. Was this exercise strategy enough to cross the lactate threshold to breed new mitochondria?

No Idea.

Anyway, I came across this video today, and at 3:12 the speaker mentions how running a marathon only burns 2600 calories. If your a well trained athlete, you can expect to complete a marathon in 2hours 30minutes, burning 17.3 calories per minute. On the other hand, if your just an average joe, you can expect to crawl across the line after about 4hours 30minutes. How many calories per minute is that? Depressingly less!

At this point I was reminded of something I saw in the comments section of this post, by blogblog, he says...

every exercise physiologist knows that exercise is completely useless for weight loss. If exercise was effective for weight loss there would be no humans because our ancestors would have starved to death a couple of million years ago. We lose 80% of our energy intake as heat. So wearing fewer clothes is a vastly more effective way to lose weight than exercise.

It appears he is right. Oh, And lets now forget how the worlds only known fat loss drug works, it doesnt mind control you and make you hit the bench press and squat rack, No. All it does is increase thermogenesis.

Eat Less Move More? Its half wrong already!. Just gotta work on that other half now.

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: