3 mins of exercise a week is enough? / HIIT

elsinora

Not talking about me!

For those in the UK - there's a programme on tonight and the article below about how:

"A few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise, according to new research, says Dr Michael Mosley. But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

Interesting to see what they say .... love Horizon programmes, but want to see what the science says. Hmm..........

mickipedia

" But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes."

That sounds like a very vague cover up for "it doesn't work" lol.. Would be interesting to see what the theory behind it is though

elsinora

" But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes."

That sounds like a very vague cover up for "it doesn't work" lol.. Would be interesting to see what the theory behind it is though

I know!!! they did this programme called "why are thin people not fat" and it was really really interesting, although a depressing prognosis for myself. I'm a long distance runner and triathlete, so would be interesting to see what they say.....

Witchmoo

There's an article about it today on the BBC news website......sounds interesting and worth a read.

solarpower03

Read about most effective HIIT- Tabata protocol.

elsinora

There's an article about it today on the BBC news website......sounds interesting and worth a read.

that's the link I provided in my original post

shakybabe

It's been on before. Basically he went on a treadmill thingy and they found like 48hr later he was still burning at an higher rate or something (hart rate or metabolism was still up), but there's no way you can burn as many calories in 3 mins as you can in an hour at whatever exercise you are doing! :noway:

sharpei65

I've just read the BBC article on this and may watch it tonight to see how they argue the theory behind it given that this differs greatly from all current advice in that you need to sustain aerobic exercise for at least 20 minutes to have any health benefits.

Yup it sounds like one of those catch all - its in your genes - theories!!

BrianSharpe

There is a growing body of evidence supporting the value of high intensity training programs (the concept has been around for decades but has become far more fashionable with things like crossfit) .

Interestingly there was an article in the February 2012 issue of Runners World suggesting that these types of workouts may be very beneficial to distance runners..... http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-263--14192-F,00.html

elsinora

It's been on before. Basically he went on a treadmill thingy and they found like 48hr later he was still burning at an higher rate or something (hart rate or metabolism was still up), but there's no way you can burn as many calories in 3 mins as you can in an hour at whatever exercise you are doing! :noway:

agree!!!!

sharpei65

Obviously they are not focused on numbers of calories burned, its the effect on your insulin and the efficiency of how your body uses oxygen and in turn your future health.....

It does sound familiar to another documentary he did but I think this one on H.I.T. is different

glpennington

I am doing HIT with a personal trainer for two half hour sessions per week. I have been at it for six months. The focus is on targeted major muscle groups with workout to failure. Work out to failure is where the muscle simply cannot do another rep. What people don't explain is that this point comes after your muscles scream and your mind triggers the fight or flight mechanism and your head starts spinning. Where I can say that I am much more defined in certain muscles than I ever have been before, I can't say it has done a complete job. I worked out with a buddy the other day and had very little aerobic endurance. I am also disappointed that I'm not losing belly fat as fast as I had hoped. Diet plays a major factor in fat loss. However, I believe that some aerobic and flexibility exercise needs to be added back in for me to see any more major gains.

Givemewings

Hmmm.very interesting! Will definitely watch! Thanks for the heads up!

lesliejil4

UUUmmm I would agree that some "smaller bursts of exercise" would be beneficial especially for those who don't exercise at all but would completely disagree that this is key to long term health and fitness. Don't get me wrong, I don't think people need to exercise to the extreme but with the right combo of strength and cardio, I think fitness and health can be achieved in 4-5 sessions a week.

lesliejil4

Exactly what I'm saying. There has to be a balance. Also, everone needs the cardio for good heart health among other things.

olong

This article only talks about HIT's benefits for insulin sensitivity and aerobiic (heart and lungs getting oxygen to body) fitness. Nothing about improvement to muscles, bones, energy benefits. It's a myoptic article that fails to mention the myriad of other purposes of exercise. It does not address the othe health issues that regular exercise benefits. It's benefits, while they may be valid and valuable, are few.

Everything in moderation!

mickyjd

Interesting - worth the watch.

I've been doing HIT for 6 mornings per week since January and I have to say it's helped my running times enormously. also my resting heart rate has come down 15 bpm, so I love it.

A bit like the other poster, the fat hasn't come off my stomach as quickly as I'd have liked, but I'm fitter and faster and have made a change for the rest of my life, so woop woop, bring on more HIT training I say.

Thanks to the OP for this thread, much appreciated!

gidgeclev

Interested on the effect on insulin reaction - I can't help but think I have some problem with insulin resistance as I really have to cut carbs to lose any weight so this could be very helpful for people like me who struggle to exercise regularly due to work commitments, commuting 3 hours a day, back problems and terminal lethargy during the week. 3 minutes running hard on the spot per day is easily manageable!

becka63

I think they were discussing it on the radio at the weekend, basically, it's a guy who trains Olympic athletes and has determined through research (I didn't hear the programme, my husband told me about it) that this intense form of working out is more effective because it uses up to 80% of your muscles for a very short time. He recommends you do it on a stationary bike rather than running, because running uses less muscles and for this type of exercise you are more prone to injury. Basically, you 'warm up' at a moderate pace for 20 sec, then go hell for leather for 40 sec and that's your workout!

It will be interesting to watch though- perhaps therel'll be a sudden surge of sale of exercise bikes?!!

Cimolestes

I see some people talking about 'Workout to Failure' where your muscles absolutely cannot do any more. This seems an odd concept given that if you did it to an animal it would be regarded as extremely cruel and if you did it to your car it would be damaged. Weird...

SHBoss1673

I read the article, lot of vague facts in there.

The bottom line is this: HIIT training is a good addition to a regular training routine, but it won't get you 100% of the way there, no matter what your genes are doing for you. And 3 minutes a week will do very little for you anyway. A single HIIT session should be between 4 and 20 minutes (not including the warm up and cool down) depending on the type, and completeness of the workout. I.E. if you are doing total body HIIT, the routine can be longer as you're using more muscle groups, but if you're targeting (like using tabata protocol) then it will be about 4 to 5 minutes.

What HIIT training does:

It's real focus was originally designed for specificity, or the concept of targeting a specific muscle or muscle group and working only that group, usually very hard or to failure. Since an individual muscle or group can only work so hard for so long before reaching overload or energetic fatigue, that doesn't take very long. This forces that muscle to signal for increases in it's ability to extract oxygen and/or store and use glycogen at the muscle cell sites. It can also activate dormant muscle fiber bundles and allow you to gain strength without gaining new muscle mass. There is also some side overall cardiovascular benefit because you're working aerobically and at the aerobic threshold for much of this routine.
What HIIT won't do: it won't trigger hypertrophic effects (mass building, total muscle power increases) and it won't be very effective at overall cardiovascular increases (overall endurance), although the local muscular endurance will increase.

so is HIIT good? Yes, if your body can support it, I recommend it 1 to 2 times a week.
Is HIIT all you need? No, it only covers part of the needs of a body, not all of them. Cardio and weight training are also needed for a comprehensive workout program.

BerryH

The original context of the word "fit" is "fit for purpose", in other words capable of addressing the task at hand. By Survival Of The Fittest, Darwin meant best adapted to the environment, not necessarily the fastest or strongest.

HIIT may improve a few biological markers for general health in the body, but if you want to run a Marathon, bench your own body weight, swing your toddler round without hurting your back, look great in a swimsuit or do a physical job and still have enough energy to go dancing, HIIT won't achieve your goals.

elsinora

I see some people talking about 'Workout to Failure' where your muscles absolutely cannot do any more. This seems an odd concept given that if you did it to an animal it would be regarded as extremely cruel and if you did it to your car it would be damaged. Weird...

sorry I'm going off topic here but I love your WoW avatar ..... even if it is alliance. Hmmpfff.

SHBoss1673

I see some people talking about 'Workout to Failure' where your muscles absolutely cannot do any more. This seems an odd concept given that if you did it to an animal it would be regarded as extremely cruel and if you did it to your car it would be damaged. Weird...

not necessarily. Working to failure just means that you've exhausted either immediate energy supply or power, every time an antelope outruns a cheetah the cheetah has worked to failure, every time a cat outruns a dog in open space, the dog worked to failure, every time a horse in a race begins to fall off the pace, they've crossed into the anaerobic threshold and are in failure. But that cheetah has worked their muscles to failure, making them stronger and able to sustain the higher level for longer next time, maybe allowing that cheetah to catch the antelope next time.

A car would just run out of gas. But a car is a bad example, as cars don't have the ability to increase their storage capacity or fuel efficiency on their own.

kyle4jem

Methinks the programme title and article headline is somewhat misleading.

When your read further you see that they are talking about 3 mins of HIIT a week which itself is wrapped up in about 36 mins of general exercise you can see that what they are saying is that by adding HIIT to your routine you could improve your general fitness.

I've been reading a lot about HIIT and the benefits thereof and have recently incorporated some sprints into my swimming (I generally swim 100-150 x 18m lengths 3-4 times a week and now after 21 lengths I do 2 lengths at sprint pace and then a further 8 at normal swimming pace and then repeat ending on about 15 normal lengths to warm down.)

It's early days, but I'm doing this to see if I can increase my stamina and improve my general swimming pace as I'm training for a 5 km swimathon at the end of April.

Micahel Mosely, the presenter of this docu-prog is medically trained, but not a practising medic. About a year and half ago he made another programme for the BBC 10 Things You Need To Know About Losing Weight (I found it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/dietchannel1 in segments, but the BBC has now blocked the content :grumble: ) I remember this program quite vividly and it did give me a lot of tips that I have since incorporated into my own diet and fitness program. Some of these 10 things were:

♦ Don't skip breakfast - the idea being that if you skip a meal, when you do get round to eating, your brain craves calorie-dense foods which can lead to overeating in some people
♦ Incorporate protein into every meal - they fed three blokes painting the Forth Railway Bridge three different breakfasts all with the same calorie count, but one was porridge with no protein, one had a little bit of protein and one was bacon & eggs and then they asked the men to press a button when they felt hungry and the one who pressed first just had the porridge and the one who felt hungry last was Mr Bacon & eggs.
♦ Soup keeps you fuller longer - they gave a group of Army recruits the same lunch: roast chicken, potato & veg with a glass of water, only 50% had their meal blitzed into a soup and like above the asked the recruits to record when they felt hungry and the soup eater generally all felt fuller for longer.
♦ Know your Calories - something we on MFP know all too well - eat more than you burn and you'll get fat, even if we perceive that what we're eating is super healthy. Once overweight actress though she ate very healthily and it turned out she was eating 3000+ calories a day in fruit salads and yoghurt and other so-called natural, healthy foods.
♦ Low-fat dairy is good for you as it contains fat that wraps itself around bad fats and then you pooh them away.
♦ Exercise is the gift that keeps on giving - when you exercise aerobically you not only burn off calories during exercise, but you continue to burn off calories, in other words it ups your BMR, hence the benefits of regular exercise.

I wish I could remember the rest :ohwell:

I'll be watching tonight as I want to see what else they say with regards to HIIT.

MrsTattie

It was very interesting! Big eugh when they did the fat in his blood. Bit too much close up on needles! The science and research They are doing is great.....but still basically they can't zap the fat away. Interesting about your genes playing a huge part.

Witchmoo

There's an article about it today on the BBC news website......sounds interesting and worth a read.

that's the link I provided in my original post

Excuse me.....

ladyraven68

It was very interesting! Big eugh when they did the fat in his blood. Bit too much close up on needles! The science and research They are doing is great.....but still basically they can't zap the fat away. Interesting about your genes playing a huge part.

I've just watched it on iplayer - the NEAT experiment was very interesting - quite shocking he could use up an extra 500 calories per day so easily.

I'm going to set an alarm to get up from my chair every 30 minutes to walk around the house.

MrsTattie

Yes, just by not sitting incredible! My hubby always wanders around when he is on the phone and so now is saying that is a good reason not to go to the gym! It was really interesting how they chose the volunteers the waitress v the suit who goes to the gym. It just shows you that all the cliche advise about walking up stairs and changing small areas in your life really help. "the chair is a killer" makes you think! Right I'm off to walk the hound! (I am standing as a type this!)

Yori1

Interesting programme - the bit about the genes was a bummer - food for thought me thinks!