The most common answer I get from people when I ask why they don’t exercise is, “I don’t have the time.” That is not quite the case. According to recent research, it may not take nearly as long as you think you will do to get a beneficial workout.
In a study, 27 men who were considered sedentary were divided into three groups. One group did 50 minutes of moderate exercise three times a week. Another group did 10 minutes of high intensity exercise in the form of sprint break training (SIT). The third group was still sedentary. The 10-minute SIT exercise consisted of a 2-minute warm-up and a 3-minute relaxation.
Here’s what the short routine, made by cycling, looked like:
Warm-up: 2 minutes
Sprint: 20 seconds
Low to moderate effort cycling: 2 minutes
Sprint: 20 seconds
Low to moderate effort cycling: 2 minutes
Sprint: 20 seconds
Low to moderate effort cycling: 2 minutes
Cooling: 2-3 minutes
For those of you who count, that’s 10 minutes of total work, and only 1 minute – seriously sprinting, done three times a week. That couldn’t be enough to elicit any sort of serious response, right?
Well, after 12 weeks, the researchers found that the results of a number of key health measurements were almost identical for the people who did either the long bursts of moderate intensity continuous training (MICT) or the SIT, although the men doing SIT had exercise volume and time commitment five times lower. Researchers measured for insulin sensitivity, cardiovascular fitness and skeletal muscle strength.
On its website, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that adults should do at least 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise or 75 minutes a week of vigorous exercise and that vigorous exercises should be done for at least 10 minutes at a time. But when paired with men doing 150 minutes of MICT, the group doing SIT needed only 30 minutes a week and only 3 minutes a week of high intensity exercise to get the same effect .
The study also referred to recent research which found that people enjoy high intensity sessions more than moderate intensity ones and are more likely to continue doing the exercise over a four week period.
Choosing to do moderate or intense exercise depends on a number of factors including your goals. But if you want to save more time each week, fit your cardio into shorter timescales, or just don’t like cardio and want to transfer it as quickly as possible, consider focusing on very short bursts of high intensity workouts. You may eventually enjoy more.