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Saving Time on Exercises
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Researchers at McMaster University have found that a single minute of very intense exercise within a 10-minute session produces health benefits similar to those from 50 minutes of moderate-intensity continuous exercise.

    Brief bursts of intense exercise are remarkably effective, a very time-efficient workout strategy, according to Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster and lead author on the study, published online in an open-access paper in the journal PLOS ONE

    The ”sprint interval training” (SIT) protocol in the experiment involved three intermittent 20-second “all-out” cycle sprints interspersed with two minutes of continuous low-intensity exercise for recovery. MICT (the current exercise guideline) involves 45 minutes of continuous cycling at ~70% maximal heart rate. Both protocols involve a two-minute warm-up and three-minute cool-down.

    Personal comment - I suggest kick scooter, it can provide very high load on much smaller speed, and also saves huge time each day on other things.

  • 3 Replies sorted by
  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn

    This is a good study, but it just confirms what previous studies have already clearly shown. Albeit, this study has a a second control group of people who did not add any exercise at all instead of just the short or long exercise protocol. Also, it ran longer (12 weeks) than many previous studies.

  • karlkarl

    I agree it has been known for quite a while now that "short intense" excercise is efficient with regards to training results. But the one thing that does not get mentioned here is that short, intense excercises come with an elevated risk of adverse side effects, such as accidents, orthopedic issues, heart attacks etc. - so it's less recommendable to people who are not pretty healthy.

  • DouglasHornDouglasHorn

    Good point. I was using hill sprints to get exercise when my schedule was quite tight. There's really no better way I know to get into shape quickly. But it soon inflamed my Achilles tendons to the point I had to stop. This test protocol used stationery bikes--and the no-impact exercise is probably a key to how untrained athletes were able to keep at it. I may work in some 20-second bike sprints now that the weather is decent.

    One other thing that isn't mentioned is that to really max out your exercise output for 20-seconds, you end up feeling like shit. If you aren't on the edge of puking at the end of the session then you didn't really maximize your output. Choking down vomit every workout gets old fast.

    I wish they had done one more protocol in this study. It would be interesting to know what a fairly intense 10-minute exercise session would yield, since that's the amount of time required to do the "fast" protocol.

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