3 mins of exercise a week is enough? / HIIT

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!