Some of you probably saw the recent Horizon programme ‘The Truth About Exercise’ which explored the assertion by a Canadian Physical Science team that you could improve your fitness by just a few minutes of training each week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cywtq)
While many of us wonder just how much exercise we really need in order to improve our health and fitness, the Canadian Scientists turned this on its head and set about asking how little exercise we need.
The emerging and answer appears to be - a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to work a bit.
The Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, gathered several groups of volunteers. One group consisted of sedentary but generally healthy middle-aged men and women. Another comprised middle-aged and older patients who’d been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.
The Researchers tested each volunteer’s maximum heart rate and peak power output on a stationary bicycle. In both groups, the peaks were not very high. All of the volunteers were out of shape and, in the case of the cardiac patients, unwell. But they gamely agreed to undertake a newly devised programme of cycling intervals.
Most of us 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.
But the Canadian Researchers didn’t ask their volunteers to sprinkle a few interval sessions into exercise routines. Instead, the Researchers wanted the groups to exercise exclusively with intervals.
CAN IT WORK? As with all things training the answer is yes AND no.
First you need to be prepared to work VERY hard. This doesn’t mean getting slightly out of breath and it starting to hurt a bit hard – it means flashing before your eyes and your body feeling like your limbs are about to explode and fall off hard. Your breathing will be so hard that all you will be thinking about is ‘when will this end?’ If you can take yourself to this place then you will be a fitter person.
Secondly, you need to be fully aware of the benefits you are gaining AND not gaining - the key loss being FAT LOSS. The intervals can’t be used to replace the maintenance of a good healthy diet.
The McMasters scientists did test a punishing workout, known as high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, that involved 30 seconds of all-out effort at 100% of a person’s maximum heart rate. After six weeks, these lacerating HIIT sessions produced similar physiological changes in the leg muscles of young men as multiple, hour-long sessions per week of steady cycling, even though the HIIT workouts involved about 90% less exercise time.
Recognizing, however, that few of us willingly can or will practice such straining all-out effort, the Researchers also developed a gentler but still chronologically abbreviated form of HIIT. This modified routine involved one minute of strenuous effort, at about 90% 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.
This routine was then further abbreviated for the TV programme to 3 minutes a week with the presenter only doing 12 minutes of exercise per month! By the end of the programme he was exhibiting greater insulin sensitivity (good for removing excess sugars from the system)
According to the Professor of Kinesiology at McMaster who led the study Martin Gibala, HIIT training will not be ideal or necessary for everyone. “If you have time” for regular 30-minute or longer endurance exercise training, “then by all means, keep it up,” he said. “There’s an impressive body of science showing” that such workouts “are very effective at improving health and fitness.”
My personal view is that you might do well to commit to BOTH types of training in order to achieve a balance and not just target a single element of fitness. I have used HIIT training for a number of years to provide a short term alterative to a full programme and it works very well as long as the commitment is there SOOOO…
Try the methodology by all means - but don’t cheat yourself!!
Happy Training
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