Can You Get Fit in Five Minutes?
November 09 2012
By Dr. Mercola
One of the biggest barriers many people face in sticking with a
regular exercise program is the time it takes to do it.
Carving out an hour or two to hit the gym can seem daunting, and
on some days might be completely unrealistic.
This doesn't have to be your excuse for not exercising, because a
growing body of research shows you can get fit in a fraction of the
time compared to the "old standard" recommendations of exercising 30
minutes to an hour most days of the week by using high-intensity
interval training (HIIT) such as Peak Fitness.
How Does High-Intensity Interval Training Work?
The most recent research shows that alternating relatively short
bursts of intense exercise with periods of rest can deliver many of
the health and fitness benefits you get from doing hours of
conventional exercise – even if done only a total of a few minutes
each week.
You don't need a gym to perform high-intensity interval
exercises. They can be performed with virtually any type of exercise
-- with or without equipment. You can just as easily do interval
training by walking or running outdoors as you can using a recumbent
bike or an elliptical machine.
While it's theoretically possible to reap valuable results with
as little as three minutes once a week, it might be more
beneficial doing them two or three times a week for a total of 4-6
minutes of intense exertion, especially if you are not doing
strength training, as recommended in my
Peak Fitness workout (I'll explain this in detail below).
You do not need to do them more often than that however.
In fact, doing it more frequently than two or three times a week can
be counterproductive, as your body needs to recover between
sessions. The key to making interval training work is, in a word,
intensity.
Fat Loss, Aerobic Boosts and More: The Research Speaks for Itself
For the past couple of years, I've encouraged the use of
high-intensity interval training as a key strategy for improving
your health, boosting weight loss, promoting human growth hormone
(HGH) production, and improving strength and stamina. I've been
doing it myself since April 2010, after meeting
fitness expert Phil Campbell (author of Ready Set Go),
so I can also vouch for its effectiveness from personal experience.
Of course, the research on HIIT is just pouring in as well, and
it's showing phenomenal results.
One study published in the Journal of Obesity1
reported that 12 weeks of HIIT not only can result in significant
reductions in total abdominal, trunk, and visceral fat, but also can
give you significant increases in fat-free mass and aerobic power.
In this study, in which young overweight males were randomly
assigned to either HIIT exercise or a control group, the following
health benefits were achieved by the exercising group doing just 20
minutes of high-intensity exercises (only a fraction of the 20
minutes is done at high intensity, the rest is recovery) three times
a week for three months:
- Aerobic power increased by 15 percent
- Reduction of total fat mass: Nearly 4.5 pounds
- Visceral fat reduced by 17 percent
Other research published in the journal Cell Metabolism,2
showed that when healthy but inactive people exercise intensely,
even if the exercise is brief, it produces an immediate change in
their DNA. While the underlying genetic code in the muscle remains
unchanged, exercise activates important structural and chemical
changes associated with DNA expression within the muscles, and this
contraction-induced gene activation appears to lead to the genetic
reprogramming of muscle for strength, lending a molecular biological
explanation for some of the well-known structural and metabolic
benefits of exercise.
Several of the genes affected by an acute bout of exercise are
genes involved in fat metabolism. Specifically, the study suggests
that when you exercise, your body almost immediately experiences
genetic activation that increases the production of fat-busting
(lipolytic) enzymes.
Improve Your Heart Health and Your Insulin Sensitivity
Peak Fitness type exercises appear to be better than conventional
cardio at burning fat and promoting weight loss, but it also offers
additional astounding benefits to your heart and risk of chronic
diseases, like diabetes. A Canadian research team gathered several
groups of volunteers, including sedentary but generally healthy
middle-aged men and women, and patients of a similar age who had
been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.3
The participants were asked to undertake a program of cycling
intervals as their exclusive form of exercise.
After several weeks on the program, both the unfit volunteers and
the cardiac patients showed significant improvements in their health
and fitness. Most remarkably, the cardiac patients showed
"significant improvements" in both heart and blood vessel
functioning. And, contrary to what popular belief might dictate, the
intense exercises did not cause any heart problems for any
of the cardiac patients.
The conventional widely held belief is that the short exposure of
the exercise actually helps insulate your heart from the intensity!
Equally remarkable were the results of yet another study, in
which unfit but otherwise healthy middle-aged adults were able to
improve their insulin sensitivity and blood sugar regulation after
just two weeks of interval training (three sessions per week).4
A follow-up study also found that interval training positively
impacted insulin sensitivity. In fact, the study involved people
with full-blown type 2 diabetes, and just ONE interval training
session was able to improve blood sugar regulation for the next 24
hours!5
This truly is amazing, and while aerobic fitness and fat loss is
indeed important, improving and maintaining good insulin sensitivity
is perhaps one of the most important aspects of optimal
health. The fact that you can improve your insulin sensitivity
significantly with a time investment of less than one hour a month
really should send people straight to the gym en masse...
A Simple to Follow HIIT Approach: Peak Fitness
If you are using exercise equipment I recommend using a recumbent
bicycle or an elliptical machine for your high-intensity interval
training, although you certainly can use a treadmill, or sprint
anywhere outdoors. You can also sprint outside but must be very
careful about stretching prior to sprinting. Also, unless you are
already an athlete, I would strongly advise against sprinting, as
several people I know became injured doing it the first time that
way. For a demonstration using an elliptical machine, please see the
following video.
Here are the core principles:
- Warm up for three minutes
- Exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You
should be gasping for breath and feel like you couldn't possibly
go on another few seconds. It is better to use lower resistance
and higher repetitions to increase your heart rate
- Recover for 90 seconds, still moving, but at slower pace and
decreased resistance
- Repeat the high-intensity exercise and recovery 7 more
times**
- Cool down for a few minutes afterward by cutting down your
intensity by 50-80 percent
More:
http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2012/11/09/high-intensity-training.aspx?e_cid=20121109_DNL_art_2
This content may be copied in full, with
copyright, contact, creation and information intact, without specific
permission, when used only in a not-for-profit format. If any other
use is desired, permission in writing from Dr. Mercola is required.
© Copyright 1997-2012 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
|