Repeated six-second bursts of exercise 'can transform health'

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28400968

by Libertatea • 12 years ago

57 35 12 years ago

jqm5• 12 years ago

I hope this article gets some attention. I have felt a lot better from high intensity training. Much much better than half hour long slogs on the treadmill.

I really believe it is the best for general cardiovascular fitness.

sitkack• 12 years ago

5 rapid pushups and 30 seconds of plank followed by 5 squats. Tune to fit of course, but a really good micro exercise.

jqm5• 12 years ago

The idea is that your heart and lungs (probably specifically heart in my case) are getting a workout. In this case we aren't concerned with abs, legs, biceps or any other muscles except the ones involved with cardio. We want to isolate and push these in intervals the same way a body builder might his triceps with isolation and reps.

(The lungs and heart are muscles too... sometimes people forget this).

My version goes something like this.... I jog on the treadmill for 5 or 6 minutes as a warm up. Just a slow jog, nothing too strenuous. Then, I take a break for about a minute while walking around.

Then, for three (or four depending on day and mood) iterations I do the following.... get on the treadmill and increase the speed until I can just barely keep up. I try to stay at plateau speed as long as I can... from start until exhaustion usually around 1.5- 2 minutes. Then, I take a break for around 3 minutes. I test my heart rate until it drops back to a bit above baseline... that's how I know it's time for next cycle.

I finish with another slow warm-down jog for 5 or 6 minutes.

The whole workout takes around 20 minutes and it really has improved my well being and general health. Sex life is better and I have in general much more energy. I attribute this to a stronger heart. For the record, I'm not a stranger to exercise. I ran track in high school, and have jogged and worked out periodically throughout my life... sometimes rather intensely. I'm 43 years old. I just haven't found a system that improves general feeling of health and vigor like high intensity training does. Maybe it's just me. YMMV.

glibgil3• 12 years ago

I've been thinking of try something like this. The way I thought about it was to only run a five minute mile. My plan is to go to the track and sprint for as long as I can at a five minute mile pace. When I drop below that pace, I walk until I return to walking heart rate. Then I run at a five minute mile pace. The workout ends when I have run a cumulative mile at a five minute mile pace. I figure the workout will take about 20 minutes.

philsnow• 12 years ago

thanks for sharing your experience

The lungs and heart are muscles too... sometimes people forget this

... are there really muscles in the lungs ? and is the diaphragm a muscle that benefits from training ?

d357r0y3r• 12 years ago

Great headline. Repeated bursts of ~6 seconds (aka interval training) is what they're talking about here, not 6 seconds total.

sanoli• 12 years ago

Yeah, pretty bad headline. You still need to work up a sweat, even with HIIT.

ppod• 12 years ago

Still, the total they are talking about is two minutes per week.

I'm struggling with how they can draw a conclusion from n=12. It's something to do with the population variance being low, is that right?

dang• 12 years ago

We modified the title to make it less misleading.

gfodor• 12 years ago

"A group of pensioners came into the lab twice a week for six weeks and went hell for leather on an exercise bike for six seconds.

They would allow their heart rate to recover and then go for it again, eventually building up to one minute of exercise by the end of the trial."

It actually sounds like they work up from 6 seconds in their first session to a minute per burst after a few weeks. The 6 seconds number is incredibly misleading in general, since this is just where they started out to get acclimated. It also leads me to believe that in the long run you may have to keep increasing this interval to get additional benefits. (Much like any endurance training.) I can imagine after a year maybe these folks would need to be doing 10 minute bursts. This would be awesome of course if they get there, and is still an improvement over the treadmill slog, but the headline here seems to make people think there is some free lunch in that you only need to do 6 seconds of exercise at a time to get healthy.

goldenkey• 12 years ago

From my own experience, endurance and strength come from either faster reps, or more weighted reps. Essentially, if the power wattage output of your body is high, you'll benefit immensely.

Superbloop• 12 years ago

Exactly! Good point- I think people forget that...

Ever wonder why speed skaters have some of the most muscular legs around? Its simply the number of unencumbered 'squats' they continue to do over long periods of time while practising.

Sure you can lose weight quickly with HIT and HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) but we need a lot more study to confirm that they are genuinely 'better for health'. At the moment, they're just a variation...like variations :)

obsession• 12 years ago

I have heard lots of good about interval training. I remember Freakonomics podcast mentioning it being the most effective exercise versus time spent.

collyw• 12 years ago

Economists recommending on exercise? Doesn't that raise a red flag to you?

FroshKiller• 12 years ago

Human experience isn't divided up into silos. If economists notice something about biology from a different perspective, we should evaluate their findings, not immediately distrust or dismiss them.

serf• 12 years ago

The assets valued in economics allow me to make a judgement on how an economist is likely to view , say , dieting.

With that judgement in-mind, I may be more likely to follow the instruction or believe the idea the economist is saying rather than someone else like a drug-addled rockstar or an HIV infected addict.

The information the economist espouses, however, will surely be thought of at a lower priority than any information accrued from a medical doctor, dietician, or fitness instructor.

Considering the opinions of 'non-experts' does not raise flags for me, at least.

yeukhon2• 12 years ago

Just spend 1 minute doing sit-up, push-up, move your hands, feet and your neck slowly every morning always make my day better if I can't afford to jog for 30 minutes in a park.

If you do jog, try to find a park (I usually do it in a park with basketball court so I can run in a square). I get the sunlight and the fresh air. Avoid the gym unless you are going to do weight-lifting.

supercoder• 12 years ago

1 minute of sit ups or push ups isn't going to be very effective.

Jogging is great in a park, but for a lot of people a lot of the time it's not practical because of either the weather (running isn't great fun in the rain / snow) or safety (some people can only find time to run after dark and for women that isn't sometimes safe).

So it's bad advice to say avoid the gym, as people should be finding any opportunity to exercise, not more excuses / rules to tell them not to.

glibgil3• 12 years ago

One minute of sit-ups or push ups will be very effective. My mother gets covered with aches and pains anytime she drags a rolling suitcase through the airport because it is the only time she articulates her body. Even a few push-ups, daily, would give her a massive improvement.

yeukhon2• 12 years ago

Hmm yes you are right. I should be more careful with the tone. Yes, I was merely suggesting if all possible, try outdoor instead of indoor.

The point of sit ups and push ups is so you can stretch your body after you wake up. I have back problem and it helps if I stretch a little every day. For many of us here on HN, sitting down on a chair for several hours straight is typical and thus any body stretching is very effective. Both are pretty exhaust exercise.

For elders, one of their priority is to ensure bones are strong. They can drink milk, but in addition, outdoor (sunlight) and careful body stretching are necessary.

cheepin• 12 years ago

TL:DR

Exercise is good for you. Working harder for less time is more beneficial than working less hard for greater time.

I didn't see any really new information though.

jqm5• 12 years ago

key word missing from your TL:DR...

"Interval".

jtheory• 12 years ago

The interesting part for me was the claim that brief, intense exercise was actually less dangerous than low-intensity, more prolonged exercise for the elderly.

That's not intuitive, to me -- I would have assumed that old folks should avoid sudden bursts of exercise (as "shaking things up" all of a sudden might provoke a heart attack or stroke).

I assume they'd still need to choose their activity carefully to avoid falls (particularly for osteoporosis or other known problems), but that's a separate question, and manageable with a little planning.

omegant3• 12 years ago

There are several problems with this kind of studies:

-Almost all kind of exercise will improve all markers in sedentary, not trained people.

-We all look for miracle solutions, but if you really want to improve it´ll take some time and long term commitment.

-Interval training works, but it´s currently sold as the solution for all the fitness problem. It has it´s own problems dough. Some of this problems are:

+Lack of proper warm up (Higher risk of injury)

+Lack of proper progression (just go and run), it's a dangerous way to stress an untrained cardiovascular system and muscular, esqueletical and connective tissues. They may not be able to manage the sudden stress and something may break.

+Lack of technique, running at slow speed is not that demanding, but an all-out sprint will increase the probability of an injury due to improper movement.

+Overtraing. Not even Olympic level athletes train all out all the time, the body needs recovery to improve. You give it some stress (not too much, just the least stress necessary) and then leave it to recover, It´s called overcompensation. If you are not training to obtain this overcompensation you are just wasting your time (or amusing yourself with a very high heart rate)

The biggest problem with all this fitness trends is that they oversimplify. Steady state low heart rate training has it´s place (creating an aerobic base level, improving technique, improving movement economy, recovery), as interval training does (pushing the anaerobic limit, increasing the VOmax, increasing the work capacity at max aerobic levels). Cardiovascular training is a continuum and isolating it´s parts leads to partial results.

To really be effective, they must be used inside a complete program, with volume and intensity progression, to allow the body to adapt progressively to the stress. With recovery periods (weekly monthly and yearly) to allow the body to recover and overcompensate (most interval training systems out there forget to tell people how to recover)

This may seem like loosing your time, after all people think that if you push yourself everyday you´ll end being the strongest, and the fastest. But this only leads fast to over training and injury.

The best a sedentary person can do is to look for a coach that´s able to create a long term plan adapted to her needs and goals. The plan needs to take care of aerobic-anaerobic progression (with the intervals at it's due time), muscular mass with proper care of balancing muscular groups (better muscular mass correlates to better long term health, balanced muscular groups greatly diminish the risk of injury), technique (if needed for the sport), mobility and stretching (if you are tight it´s easier to develop imbalances and to get an injury).

It´s complicated, and the knowledge needed to create a good training plan that adapts over time, takes much longer than a weekend certification course.

You don´t need a lot of time a week, 3 hours a week can take you very far. If you don´t have time for 3 hours/week to work out it´s better to start thinking in your priorities.

And for those who lack the resources for a coach (as it´s my case) there are out there very comprehensive and well thought standard training programs for different sports, put together by professional and national level Coaches in form of books, apps and web sites.

Edit: Paragraph arrangement.

jqm5• 12 years ago

I have to point out none of the problems you point out are specific to HIIT.

Over training, lack of warmup and lack of technique can be problems with any exercise regime.

omegant3• 12 years ago

But they are certainly specially dangerous with certain kinds of HIIT as you are performing very close to your maximum capability. At this point the body is under maximum stress and it´s necessary to warmup for a minimum of 10-20 min to perform it with some safety.

glibgil3• 12 years ago

Your arguments are the conventional wisdom, but do the statistics support this? Stretching was once thought to be a good way to reduce risk of injury. It was a big part of the conventional wisdom. It isn't that simple, however, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1250267/.

I think a good study would be to track people through something like their first 60 cumulative minutes of exercise after no exercise for, say, 6 months. If that 60 minutes happens in one hour or spread out over a week, is there any significant change in risk? If it is aggressive or gentle, is there any change in risk? This should be studied and verified. If it has, let me know.

I think we should treat all risks like the lottery or keno. Every time you play, your odds reset. This should be the conventional wisdom in all things.

omegant3• 12 years ago

This arguments are the ones used and shared by Olympic coaches. There is nothing new in what I say. It´s well known in sport circles that science goes between 10 and 20 years behind the Olympic training methods. They don´t have time to wait for studies to happen, they need to go for what it works now.

As I said HIIT is very very useful, possibly more effective than beginning as I said (depending of your objectives): developing slowly your capability over some months. But recommending it to people out of the blue, with out proper training time under their belt (doesn't have a minimum adaptation to physical activity) that don´t know how their own body reacts. It's just an injury waiting to happen. Not only that, Hiit training is so exhausting that a lot of people give up before they can see results. So one thing is to say that it´s effective, and other to say that it´s really useful or safe as it´s recommended, after all we are talking of finding a training system that it´s useful to the average guy who wants to start training.

IMHO it's much better to make a plan that makes you start slowly, with low volume and low intensity. And from there over the months (you don´t need a lot of them, 2-3 months is more than enough to develop a training base), start adding HIIT, etc.. But that's more difficult to sell, as we all want results this week.

What stretching does, is to allow a complete range of movement, for example people that perform bench press as their main exercise usually develop a strong forward tightness at their shoulder girdle (besides not stretching they usually don't balance the strength between pulling and pushing).

They are terribly strong in one movement (pushing), but this tightness and lack of balance helps develop a lot of shoulder problems overtime, and even it can stop the body from further developing the bench press strength. It´s more complex than only stretching. But stretching has it´s place, you only need to look at Gymnasts and Weight lifters, that are the most powerful athletes gram per gram (of relative strength, not absolute like power lifting). Both of them are very very flexible compared to the average sport practitioner. They develop that stretching capability because they need it to perform well. At that level you don't train a property that you don't need. Of course circus levels of flexibility are way too much and could lead to problems.

mtdewcmu2• 12 years ago

I am skeptical of the widely-held view that induced exercise extends lifespan. To my knowledge, there has been no study that demonstrates the effect that could be considered definitive. The physiological mechanism seems like wishful thinking. Reducing resting blood pressure is undoubtedly a good thing. But to lower resting blood pressure through exercise, your blood pressure has to be increased during exercise. So you haven't really changed the equilibrium. The likely result would be to reschedule cardiovascular events away from periods of rest to periods of exercise.

melling• 12 years ago

You sound like you're just having some sort of pointless thought experiment. We don't know if exercise will extend ones life. It might reduce, increase or have no effect on our life span. We simply don't know. What we really need to figure out is how to better measure changes in our bodies. What's going on in our cells, for example? How can we better measure everything about our bodies?

mtdewcmu2• 12 years ago

> We simply don't know.

Exactly. We dont, but exercise studies are not treated with sufficient skepticism, as if the life-extending effect is so obviously logical that it's exempt from criticism. My thought experiment was meant to show that it's hardly obvious. Strange, but scientists seem to need reminding.

irickt• 12 years ago

A version of the referenced paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4085611/

louhike• 12 years ago

It is necessary to be cautious with this kind of studies as everybody has specific needs.

I have a minor heart problem and I must avoid doing sports which require to be active for small burst like Tennis and squatch. For some people, it is better to do endurant sport like swimming, biking or doing long exercises.

joshdance• 12 years ago

Lots of things could maybe 'transform health'. But big claim, need big proof. Correlation does not equal causation. This was an examination of 12 people. Need a real trial.

Repeated six-second bursts of exercise 'can transform health'

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