
Repeated six-second bursts of exercise 'can transform health' - Libertatea
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28400968
======
yeukhon
Just spend 1 minute doing sit-up, push-up, move your hands, feet and your neck
slowly every morning always make my day better if I can't afford to jog for 30
minutes in a park.

If you do jog, try to find a park (I usually do it in a park with basketball
court so I can run in a square). I get the sunlight and the fresh air. Avoid
the gym unless you are going to do weight-lifting.

~~~
supercoder
1 minute of sit ups or push ups isn't going to be very effective.

Jogging is great in a park, but for a lot of people a lot of the time it's not
practical because of either the weather (running isn't great fun in the rain /
snow) or safety (some people can only find time to run after dark and for
women that isn't sometimes safe).

So it's bad advice to say avoid the gym, as people should be finding any
opportunity to exercise, not more excuses / rules to tell them not to.

~~~
glibgil
One minute of sit-ups or push ups will be very effective. My mother gets
covered with aches and pains anytime she drags a rolling suitcase through the
airport because it is the only time she articulates her body. Even a few push-
ups, daily, would give her a massive improvement.

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jqm
I hope this article gets some attention. I have felt a lot better from high
intensity training. Much much better than half hour long slogs on the
treadmill.

I really believe it is the best for general cardiovascular fitness.

~~~
jqm
The idea is that your heart and lungs (probably specifically heart in my case)
are getting a workout. In this case we aren't concerned with abs, legs, biceps
or any other muscles except the ones involved with cardio. We want to isolate
and push these in intervals the same way a body builder might his triceps with
isolation and reps.

(The lungs and heart are muscles too... sometimes people forget this).

My version goes something like this.... I jog on the treadmill for 5 or 6
minutes as a warm up. Just a slow jog, nothing too strenuous. Then, I take a
break for about a minute while walking around.

Then, for three (or four depending on day and mood) iterations I do the
following.... get on the treadmill and increase the speed until I can just
barely keep up. I try to stay at plateau speed as long as I can... from start
until exhaustion usually around 1.5- 2 minutes. Then, I take a break for
around 3 minutes. I test my heart rate until it drops back to a bit above
baseline... that's how I know it's time for next cycle.

I finish with another slow warm-down jog for 5 or 6 minutes.

The whole workout takes around 20 minutes and it really has improved my well
being and general health. Sex life is better and I have in general much more
energy. I attribute this to a stronger heart. For the record, I'm not a
stranger to exercise. I ran track in high school, and have jogged and worked
out periodically throughout my life... sometimes rather intensely. I'm 43
years old. I just haven't found a system that improves general feeling of
health and vigor like high intensity training does. Maybe it's just me. YMMV.

~~~
philsnow
thanks for sharing your experience

> The lungs and heart are muscles too... sometimes people forget this

... are there really muscles in the lungs ? and is the diaphragm a muscle that
benefits from training ?

~~~
jqm
Good point. I don't know that the lungs are technically muscles (probably they
aren't...I'm not going to cheat and look it up until later).

But for this purpose they behave enough like muscles... i.e., they seem to
grow stronger. Or maybe it is indeed muscles like the diagram being
strengthened. Perhaps someone with a bit more actual physiology knowledge can
answer.

Edit: Also, I forgot to mention, I do this twice a week and sometimes thrice a
week, with off periods of a few months every 5-6 months or so. I've been doing
HIIT in periods for 3-4 years since I first read about and I'm a believer. Big
change.

------
goldenkey
From my own experience, endurance and strength come from either faster reps,
or more weighted reps. Essentially, if the power wattage output of your body
is high, you'll benefit immensely.

~~~
Superbloop
Exactly! Good point- I think people forget that...

Ever wonder why speed skaters have some of the most muscular legs around? Its
simply the number of unencumbered 'squats' they continue to do over long
periods of time while practising.

Sure you can lose weight quickly with HIT and HIIT (High Intensity Interval
Training) but we need a lot more study to confirm that they are genuinely
'better for health'. At the moment, they're just a variation...like variations
:)

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louhike
It is necessary to be cautious with this kind of studies as everybody has
specific needs.

I have a minor heart problem and I must avoid doing sports which require to be
active for small burst like Tennis and squatch. For some people, it is better
to do endurant sport like swimming, biking or doing long exercises.

------
irickt
A version of the referenced paper:
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4085611/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4085611/)

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joshdance
Lots of things could maybe 'transform health'. But big claim, need big proof.
Correlation does not equal causation. This was an examination of 12 people.
Need a real trial.

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obsession
I have heard lots of good about interval training. I remember Freakonomics
podcast mentioning it being the most effective exercise versus time spent.

~~~
collyw
Economists recommending on exercise? Doesn't that raise a red flag to you?

~~~
serf
The assets valued in economics allow me to make a judgement on how an
economist is likely to view , say , dieting.

With that judgement in-mind, I may be more likely to follow the instruction or
believe the idea the economist is saying rather than someone else like a drug-
addled rockstar or an HIV infected addict.

The information the economist espouses, however, will surely be thought of at
a lower priority than any information accrued from a medical doctor,
dietician, or fitness instructor.

Considering the opinions of 'non-experts' does not raise flags for me, at
least.

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d357r0y3r
Great headline. _Repeated_ bursts of ~6 seconds (aka interval training) is
what they're talking about here, not 6 seconds total.

~~~
gfodor
"A group of pensioners came into the lab twice a week for six weeks and went
hell for leather on an exercise bike for six seconds.

They would allow their heart rate to recover and then go for it again,
eventually building up to one minute of exercise by the end of the trial."

It actually sounds like they work up from 6 seconds in their first session to
a minute per burst after a few weeks. The 6 seconds number is incredibly
misleading in general, since this is just where they started out to get
acclimated. It also leads me to believe that in the long run you may have to
keep increasing this interval to get additional benefits. (Much like any
endurance training.) I can imagine after a year maybe these folks would need
to be doing 10 minute bursts. This would be awesome of course if they get
there, and is still an improvement over the treadmill slog, but the headline
here seems to make people think there is some free lunch in that you only need
to do 6 seconds of exercise at a time to get healthy.

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omegant
There are several problems with this kind of studies:

-Almost all kind of exercise will improve all markers in sedentary, not trained people.

-We all look for miracle solutions, but if you really want to improve it´ll take some time and long term commitment.

-Interval training works, but it´s currently sold as the solution for all the fitness problem. It has it´s own problems dough. Some of this problems are:

+Lack of proper warm up (Higher risk of injury)

+Lack of proper progression (just go and run), it's a dangerous way to stress
an untrained cardiovascular system and muscular, esqueletical and connective
tissues. They may not be able to manage the sudden stress and something may
break.

+Lack of technique, running at slow speed is not that demanding, but an all-
out sprint will increase the probability of an injury due to improper
movement.

+Overtraing. Not even Olympic level athletes train all out all the time, the
body needs recovery to improve. You give it some stress (not too much, just
the least stress necessary) and then leave it to recover, It´s called
overcompensation. If you are not training to obtain this overcompensation you
are just wasting your time (or amusing yourself with a very high heart rate)

The biggest problem with all this fitness trends is that they oversimplify.
Steady state low heart rate training has it´s place (creating an aerobic base
level, improving technique, improving movement economy, recovery), as interval
training does (pushing the anaerobic limit, increasing the VOmax, increasing
the work capacity at max aerobic levels). Cardiovascular training is a
continuum and isolating it´s parts leads to partial results.

To really be effective, they must be used inside a complete program, with
volume and intensity progression, to allow the body to adapt progressively to
the stress. With recovery periods (weekly monthly and yearly) to allow the
body to recover and overcompensate (most interval training systems out there
forget to tell people how to recover)

This may seem like loosing your time, after all people think that if you push
yourself everyday you´ll end being the strongest, and the fastest. But this
only leads fast to over training and injury.

The best a sedentary person can do is to look for a coach that´s able to
create a long term plan adapted to her needs and goals. The plan needs to take
care of aerobic-anaerobic progression (with the intervals at it's due time),
muscular mass with proper care of balancing muscular groups (better muscular
mass correlates to better long term health, balanced muscular groups greatly
diminish the risk of injury), technique (if needed for the sport), mobility
and stretching (if you are tight it´s easier to develop imbalances and to get
an injury).

It´s complicated, and the knowledge needed to create a good training plan that
adapts over time, takes much longer than a weekend certification course.

You don´t need a lot of time a week, 3 hours a week can take you very far. If
you don´t have time for 3 hours/week to work out it´s better to start thinking
in your priorities.

And for those who lack the resources for a coach (as it´s my case) there are
out there very comprehensive and well thought standard training programs for
different sports, put together by professional and national level Coaches in
form of books, apps and web sites.

Edit: Paragraph arrangement.

~~~
glibgil
Your arguments are the conventional wisdom, but do the statistics support
this? Stretching was once thought to be a good way to reduce risk of injury.
It was a big part of the conventional wisdom. It isn't that simple, however,
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1250267/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1250267/).

I think a good study would be to track people through something like their
first 60 cumulative minutes of exercise after no exercise for, say, 6 months.
If that 60 minutes happens in one hour or spread out over a week, is there any
significant change in risk? If it is aggressive or gentle, is there any change
in risk? This should be studied and verified. If it has, let me know.

I think we should treat all risks like the lottery or keno. Every time you
play, your odds reset. This should be the conventional wisdom in all things.

~~~
omegant
This arguments are the ones used and shared by Olympic coaches. There is
nothing new in what I say. It´s well known in sport circles that science goes
between 10 and 20 years behind the Olympic training methods. They don´t have
time to wait for studies to happen, they need to go for what it works now.

As I said HIIT is very very useful, possibly more effective than beginning as
I said (depending of your objectives): developing slowly your capability over
some months. But recommending it to people out of the blue, with out proper
training time under their belt (doesn't have a minimum adaptation to physical
activity) that don´t know how their own body reacts. It's just an injury
waiting to happen. Not only that, Hiit training is so exhausting that a lot of
people give up before they can see results. So one thing is to say that it´s
effective, and other to say that it´s really useful or safe as it´s
recommended, after all we are talking of finding a training system that it´s
useful to the average guy who wants to start training.

IMHO it's much better to make a plan that makes you start slowly, with low
volume and low intensity. And from there over the months (you don´t need a lot
of them, 2-3 months is more than enough to develop a training base), start
adding HIIT, etc.. But that's more difficult to sell, as we all want results
this week.

What stretching does, is to allow a complete range of movement, for example
people that perform bench press as their main exercise usually develop a
strong forward tightness at their shoulder girdle (besides not stretching they
usually don't balance the strength between pulling and pushing).

They are terribly strong in one movement (pushing), but this tightness and
lack of balance helps develop a lot of shoulder problems overtime, and even it
can stop the body from further developing the bench press strength. It´s more
complex than only stretching. But stretching has it´s place, you only need to
look at Gymnasts and Weight lifters, that are the most powerful athletes gram
per gram (of relative strength, not absolute like power lifting). Both of them
are very very flexible compared to the average sport practitioner. They
develop that stretching capability because they need it to perform well. At
that level you don't train a property that you don't need. Of course circus
levels of flexibility are way too much and could lead to problems.

------
cheepin
TL:DR

Exercise is good for you. Working harder for less time is more beneficial than
working less hard for greater time.

I didn't see any __really __new information though.

~~~
jtheory
The interesting part for me was the claim that brief, intense exercise was
actually _less_ dangerous than low-intensity, more prolonged exercise for the
elderly.

That's not intuitive, to me -- I would have assumed that old folks should
avoid sudden bursts of exercise (as "shaking things up" all of a sudden might
provoke a heart attack or stroke).

I assume they'd still need to choose their activity carefully to avoid falls
(particularly for osteoporosis or other known problems), but that's a separate
question, and manageable with a little planning.

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mtdewcmu
I am skeptical of the widely-held view that induced exercise extends lifespan.
To my knowledge, there has been no study that demonstrates the effect that
could be considered definitive. The physiological mechanism seems like wishful
thinking. Reducing resting blood pressure is undoubtedly a good thing. But to
lower resting blood pressure through exercise, your blood pressure has to be
increased during exercise. So you haven't really changed the equilibrium. The
likely result would be to reschedule cardiovascular events away from periods
of rest to periods of exercise.

~~~
melling
You sound like you're just having some sort of pointless thought experiment.
We don't know if exercise will extend ones life. It might reduce, increase or
have no effect on our life span. We simply don't know. What we really need to
figure out is how to better measure changes in our bodies. What's going on in
our cells, for example? How can we better measure everything about our bodies?

~~~
mtdewcmu
>> We simply don't know.

Exactly. We dont, but exercise studies are not treated with sufficient
skepticism, as if the life-extending effect is so obviously logical that it's
exempt from criticism. My thought experiment was meant to show that it's
hardly obvious. Strange, but scientists seem to need reminding.

