Imagine this: You’re pinched for time, so you head to your living room to do a quick bout of interval training.
Then, 4 minutes later, you end your workout and head out the door to work.
Sound like heresy? Believe it or not, it’s reality now, thanks to a Norwegian study reported by LifeHacker earlier this week.
“Regular exercise training improves maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), but the optimal intensity and volume necessary to obtain maximal benefit remains to be defined,” say researchers, whose work was published in the journal PLoS One. “A growing body of evidence suggests that exercise training with low-volume but high-intensity may be a time-efficient means to achieve health benefits.”
The Study
Working on behalf of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, researchers recruited 26 overweight sedentary men described to be middle aged, and asked them to do one of these workouts: A 16 minute interval training session or a 4 minute training session.
Then, over the course of the following 10 weeks, researchers tracked how each training session affected their health markers, including their maximum endurance capacity, oxygen intake, cardiovascular health, and other minor factors, such as blood pressure and blood sugar control.
When the 10 weeks had elapsed, however, both groups improved these health markers by at least 10 percent.
“One of the main reasons people give for not exercising is that they don’t have time,” says Arnt Erik Tjonna, lead researcher of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “Everyone, we think, has time for this kind of exercise three times a week.”
While it may seem hard to believe, researchers say that those who exercised for just 4 minutes reaped the same level of benefits as those who engaged in 16 minutes of activity–but simply doing any workout won’t do. Instead, your best bet is to stick with interval training, which researchers say may be just as potent, if not more, than 30 minutes of mild to moderate exercise.
“This is not a weight-loss program,” says Tjonna. “It is, instead, a suggestion for how people can make a kick-start for better fitness.”
What is Interval Training?
While moderate exercise requires that you keep a steady pace for a period of 30 minutes or more, interval training differs in that the goal is to go as fast as possible, switching shorts bursts of speed with even shorter rest times in between.
And this, say researchers, is what scares most people from trying it out–despite the fact that it can improve a person’s endurance and speed more effectively than a 30 minute bout on the treadmill. About.com Sports Medicine expert Elizabeth Quinn explains:
“Interval training is built upon alternating short, high intensity bursts of speed with slower, recovery phases throughout a single workout. It’s thought that by performing high intensity intervals that produce lactic acid during practice, the body adapts and burns lactic acid more efficiently during exercise. This means athletes can exercise at a higher intensity for a longer period of time before fatigue or pain slows them down.”
So if you want to try it for yourself, what’s the best way to do it? For most people, nearly all exercises can be adapted into interval training modules, say experts, though most people prefer sprinting, swimming, or speed walking as an easy way to ease into it. Your best bet: If you haven’t’ done it before, stay safe by alternating periods of speed walking with periods of slow walking. As your endurance increases, sprinting or swimming may offer a bigger challenge to your cardiovascular system.
Readers: Have you tried interval training before?
Sources:
Study: 4 Minutes of Interval Training Just as Good as 16 Minutes of Interval Training – NLM.NIH.gov
The 4 Minute Workout – NYTimes.com
Interval Training – About.com
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