3 mins of exercise a week is enough? / HIIT

Read about most effective HIIT- Tabata protocol.

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:

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

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

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

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

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!

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?!!

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.

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.

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.....

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!)