
Canadian researcher behind one-minute workout has a shorter option - helloworld
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/article-the-canadian-researcher-who-coined-the-one-minute-workout-has-an-even/
======
keiferski
_The reason this matters is that “lack of time” often crops up as an excuse
when scientists try to figure out why so few of us get as much exercise as we
know we should. Gibala and others have been whittling away at this excuse for
more than a decade now, designing ever more time-efficient workouts._

The solution to the "I don't have enough time" problem is not to make shorter
and shorter workouts, but to encourage a cultural shift away from constant
media distractions and pointless hyper-productivity posturing. No one is too
busy to spend 30 minutes exercising 3 times a week.

Ditto for the obesity crisis - the solution isn't to make less caloric foods,
it's to change the culture of excessive portion sizes and sedentary
lifestyles.

~~~
wattengard
Considering that a 30 minute workout often incorporates, getting dressed (5
min), driving to the gym (20 min), working out (30 min), driving home (20
min), taking a shower (15 min), being so exhausted that the rest of the night
is down the drain....

The 30 minute workout is a myth...

~~~
lm28469
> being so exhausted that the rest of the night is down the drain.

You're only exhausted after a 30 min workout when you have 0 physical
training. After a few weeks it'll have the opposite effects. As developers our
body is rotting away day by day, if I didn't push myself to exercise the most
physical thing I'd do most of the days is pull a door to open it.

Even a set of dumbbells, a pull-up bar and a stretch mat will be miles ahead
of doing nothing. It's very insidious because you can be passive all your
youth with almost no side effects, but all those years of passivity will come
back at us when we hit 50, 60, 70.

~~~
dagw
_You 're only exhausted after a 30 min workout when you have 0 physical
training._

If you're not exhausted after a 30 minute workout that just means you're not
pushing yourself.

~~~
lm28469
I run to and from the gym (~15 min), mostly do compound exercises like ohp /
squat / deadlift / bench press for 1-2 hours 3 times a week. I'm usually home
before 9PM and cook / continue with my day. Unless you have to chop wood when
you get back home you'll be fine.

Even after bouldering for hours to the point of not being able to hold a glass
of water in my hand I've never been "so exhausted that the rest of the night
is down the drain.", and I'm far from being a genetic freak or a good athlete.

I used to be your average 70kg skinny fat teen, that was 4 years ago when I
decided to do something to not end up like all the chubby 30+ years old guys I
was seeing daily and who were unable to go up 4 flights of stairs without
panting, at some point you have to take decisions for yourself. It's not some
bs like "you can be the next Einstein/Musk/Bezos if you try hard enough",
there is no luck involved, no barrier to entry. The hard truth is that there
is no magic bullet, no quick ways to do it, you just have to get up and move,
be it cycling, lifting weight, running, swimming.

It's pure lack of motivation/confidence, once you get started everything falls
in place and gets easier. 3 or 4 hours of quality workout a week, even at
home, will change your body in a few month and you'll never look back. And if
you can't find 3 or 4 hours a week to take care of your most precious physical
possession (your body) I guess you have bigger issues to take care of.

------
sharmi
This was initially as a response to wattengard. But I realized more people
would benefit from this, so posting as a top comment.

I just wanted to post some options to workout from home. So it cuts down
atleast on the time to drive out the gym and driving back. And if done in the
morning also avoids the extra shower :)

Please note that other than having used these videos, I have no other
affiliation to both these options. Both are free resources.

FitnessBlender[1] has >500 workout videos. The best part is, these videos are
tagged by their difficulty from level 1 to level 5. You can jump into any
workout at any level. If it is overwhelming or underwhelming, you can adjust
accordingly. At my weakest even a level 2 workout was killing. Then I had
moved upto a level 4 or short level 5 workout. You can do all the exercises
with a dumbbell or bodyweight. Lost nearly 20kg using this. Then I got
careless and let slip. Now I am starting back at level 3. I used to make my
own workout plan, putting together the workouts that I liked. They also have
paid workout programs that makes all the planning much easier.

100Pushups.net[2] and its associated pullups, situps running etc. These are
just text resources that give you a detailed plan on how to progress from a
single pushup(or none) and slowly build up until you can ultimately do 100.
(The tracking app was added later and I have not used it.) It is purely
bodyweight. You do need a pullup bar. I tried it for a short period and
started seeing results in a very short period. But somehow working out with
the video was a lot more motivating and I pushed myself more, than working out
alone following some plan on paper. So I went back to FitnessBlender again.
Yet, I feel, if you are good at pushing yourself, then this would be a good
option.

Other please, share at-home workouts that have worked for you.

[1]
[https://www.fitnessblender.com/videos](https://www.fitnessblender.com/videos)

[2] [http://www.100pushups.net/](http://www.100pushups.net/)

------
AllegedAlec
It's not a 'lack of time' why people don't exercise, they don't make time to
do it. I totally understand why: it's so much easier and convenient to not do
it, and for a very long time, you don't notice it all that much if you don't
if you fail to do any exercise; it's only afters a long time of being
sedentary and then having to do something slightly intensive you notice that
all your strength and stamina is gone.

It's not lack of time; it's that people do not actively feel how badly their
bodies deteriorate when they do not exercise, since it goes so slowly, and
they do not do any exercise, so they also never really find out until it has
become a real problem. If people would feel how bad it was not to exercise,
they would be much more accommodating in their immensely busy schedules and
actually take time out of their day to do so.

~~~
saiya-jin
Once you cross certain threshold in fitness, and keep that level for some
time, it becomes painfully obvious when you stop and almost immediately start
losing all that hard gained strength, stamina, flexibility etc.

Relatively high fitness level is such a great feeling from oneself, it also
positively affects your mind and mood. Every time I stop for whatever reason
(ie travelling, sickness) I hate it, and also remember how hard it is to get
back.

------
Scumbarge
My two cents on the "enough time to work out" topic: I work eight hours a day
on grunt level marketing stuff, in an open office.

I used to do power lifting, but between this job, online programming classes,
and trying to maintain a relationship with my wife, this dropped off.

Something that helped me immensely was just bringing a couple 25-pound
dumbbells to work, leaving them by a pile of junk behind the building, and
ducking out for a "smoke break" every 2 hours or so, during which I spend 5
intense minutes systematically annihilating every muscle group I can. The
"best" workout is the one you can consistently do.

Pros: Takes maybe 20 minutes a day and I'm doing it on company time, but I
don't feel bad about it because I don't smoke and it clears my mind to focus
on more PPC drudgery.

Cons: None. Bring dumbbells to work tomorrow and hide them behind your junk
pile.

~~~
kuhhk
Someone left their dumbdells at my old office, and it became community use.
Approximately every hour, I'd get up, stretch, do some pushups, and dumbell
workouts. Didn't need to hide it, nobody cared.

------
cominous
The problem is, that even after a 1-minute workout, I need to take a shower
and change my clothes if I want to stay 8+ more hours with other people.

~~~
alien_
Yes, that's why you should incorporate it in your morning routine right right
after waking up, while still wearing the pajamas and then take a shower.

------
vijay_nair
Four years ago I went looking for the fastest way to cut down my weight and
ended up comparing different modes of running on Wolfram Alpha. Turns out
increasing the incline was the most effective at burning energy, almost 3X or
300% at 30° incline¹ which is bonkers.

I couldn't mod my treadmill to get any significant amount of incline but
quickly landed on the idea of using my staircase and thus began a 4 hour
regimen (10:30 pm to 2:30 am) of running up and down 25 steps 120+ times. It
was highly effective (96 kg to 83 kg) but I blew out my knees and right ankle
after 4 months of this, forcing me to stop. It also was a problem when my
neighbour's wife kept peeking through their door to let me know they didn't
appreciate all that clacking at 1 in the morning.

4 years later I'm holding onto the same level I reached back then (84 kg) and
I'd love to do it again and get it down by another 10 kg in an intense two-
month sprint. But I get cold feet every time I think about it.

I'm taking Vit. C now to boost collagen so my joints should fare better the
next time I try it. The lawyer and his wife have also moved out which is
another annoyance taken care of. Whether I can resist the urge to push hard
after seeing the results is the question.

¹[https://imgur.com/a/DAvovYA](https://imgur.com/a/DAvovYA)

~~~
lm28469
It sounds very tough on your joints, did you consider swimming ? Cycling ?
Rowing machines ? It's not all about the numbers, the only diets / workouts
that work are the ones you can keep as a lifestyle.

~~~
vijay_nair
Swimming ticks all the right boxes for me but the nearest pool is a bit far
from here and I wasn't sure about the quality of water and general upkeep.

If those variables can be controlled swimming is definitely the best way to
get a full-body workout without taxing the joints. Just the fact that I don't
end up a sweaty mess with an extra load of laundry after each workout is a
major win for me. Only problem is I don't trust the people running the pools
here.

Edit: Tried cycling for a few years but it ended up not being safe early in
the morning with a few politically-motivated murders on my route.

My current workout is just lifting weights + mountain climbers¹. Hasn't rocked
my world but they do help me maintain status quo.

¹[https://youtu.be/nmwgirgXLYM?t=40](https://youtu.be/nmwgirgXLYM?t=40)

------
baxtr
_His newest study finds that dashing up a staircase for just 20 seconds,
repeated a few times a day, can measurably improve your fitness._

Well, but doing this “a few” times, let’s say 3x, results in... 1 min. Where’s
the news?

------
pizza
Don't remember where I heard it but once someone remarked that if President
Obama could make time for an hour a day for exercise, then most people (which
is to say, people not buried under their work or facing other difficult
challenges) probably can come up with a better excuse than simply not having
the time.

~~~
lordnacho
The thing is a managerial schedule has a lot of autonomy. The president
decides when all the meetings are. Even ambassadors will move their
appointments around to see you if you're POTUS.

Similarly for a lot of these tough-guy manager stories, they aren't doing
anything that requires deep thinking like debugging TCP stacks.

~~~
dsego
I don't buy this. Just make yourself unavailable and make it non-negotiable.

~~~
notfromhere
In a managerial role you can mold your schedule to your life, rather than your
life to your schedule.

You can have non-negotiable meetings and shift things around all you want if
you have that kind of authority. But a lot of every day folks don't have the
kind of work autonomy to have their schedule match their preferences

------
sifoobar
I wish this was a joke, but here we are. Luckily I have a better alternative
for you; find a meaningful physical activity that you enjoy doing instead, and
sit back and watch your priorities take care of the rest.

I have a wooden man [0] and a sand bag in my living room, which means the
barrier to training is basically non-existing. And its a kind of training I
enjoy, because it leads somewhere and strengthens the body in a non-artificial
way. I'll do five minutes here, ten there; with the occasional late night 2
hour session.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSbUoSxee0I&t=21s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSbUoSxee0I&t=21s)

------
drieddust
> Still, the stair-climbing protocol isn’t just about time, he says. It should
> also “remind people that ‘exercise’ does not have to involve changing into
> spandex, going to the gym and making an hour time commitment.” The
> volunteers in the new study, he notes, didn’t don workout gear or shower
> afterwards; it was just a brief moment in their normal daily routine.

I completely agree to this one. Ritual of going to Gym becomes a big
procrastion.

------
bunderbunder
I think I might prefer the opinion of this other Canadian researcher: it's way
too hard to incorporate physical activity into your regular activities.

[https://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2019/01/23/it-is-
still...](https://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2019/01/23/it-is-still-way-
too-hard-to-be-physically-active/)

------
sygma
I wonder if this is what a Minimum Viable Workout (MVW) would look like. I’m
not trying to make my exercise life more efficient (I think time spent in the
gym without a phone helps me disconnect), but because sometimes the effort
barrier is too high for me and I fall into periods of inactivity. So I would
find it appealing to maintain a baseline of fitness with a “no excuses” MVW.

------
lordnacho
I've often wondered if would help me to do an all-out 1K row right before
bedtime, each day. I guess it would take 3:30 or so, maybe 3:00 if I really
smash it.

The times I've done that I've felt extremely tired afterwards, and had to have
a good long rest.

~~~
maaaats
How would regularly performing at max without a warmup affect tendons etc.?

~~~
lordnacho
Is there evidence this is bad for you?

------
onetimemanytime
Lack of time because we must sit tweeting and posting selfies 7 hours a day.
Everyone has 24 hours, if you cannot take 1 hour from that for arguably the
most important thing for your health...

~~~
darawk
But let me ask you this: if you haven't posted to instagram in the last hour,
are you really alive? And isn't being alive the most important aspect of
health?

~~~
ahje
Indeed! You can't really post a picture showing how awesome your life is when
dashing up the stairs.

It's quite possible to get an hour of good exersize walking the dog though and
that is definitely something you can brag about. #zenlife (please, don't hurt
me)

