I've been doing some reading and studying about exercise physiology in the past few days.
I will just plagiarise outright here from what I read in Tim Ferriss's book "The 4-hour Body", because I think I would not be able to write it better than he did:
"On June 6, 2005, Martin Gibala of McMaster University appeared on CNN with news that seemed too good to be true:
“Six minutes of pure, hard exercise three times a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity.”
Changes that were thought to require hours per week were achieved with just four to seven 30-second bursts of all-out (100% VO2 Max) stationary biking, with four minutes of recovery time between bursts. These bursts were performed 3x a week for just two weeks. Total on-bike time for the two weeks was a mere 15 minutes. Endurance capacity for this “sprint” group almost doubled, from 26 to 51 minutes, and their leg muscles showed a significant 38% increase of our friend citrate synthase (CS), one of the desirable endurance enzymes. The control group, which was active (jogging, cycling, or aerobics) showed no changes.
It seemed like a fluke.
It had to be repeated, and it was. This time with an even higher bar for evaluation: an 18.6-mile (30 km) cycling test.
The sprint group followed the 30-second burst protocol. The control group performed more traditional moderate-intensity cycling for 60– 90 minutes at 60% VO2 Max. Both groups worked out 3x a week and were evaluated before and after with an 18.6-mile cycling test. The improvements were almost identical, as were the increases in muscle oxidative capacity.
Recognize that working long in the gym is often a form of laziness, an avoidance of hard thinking. Three to four hours per week or less than 15 minutes per week? The choice is yours— work long or work hard— but the results appear to be the same. Trust data instead of the masses."
Leave some comments. Let me know if you trust this or not. Let me know what you think. Ask me questions. What should I do so you can easily apply this? Thanks for reading.
Reference:
I will just plagiarise outright here from what I read in Tim Ferriss's book "The 4-hour Body", because I think I would not be able to write it better than he did:
"On June 6, 2005, Martin Gibala of McMaster University appeared on CNN with news that seemed too good to be true:
“Six minutes of pure, hard exercise three times a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity.”
Changes that were thought to require hours per week were achieved with just four to seven 30-second bursts of all-out (100% VO2 Max) stationary biking, with four minutes of recovery time between bursts. These bursts were performed 3x a week for just two weeks. Total on-bike time for the two weeks was a mere 15 minutes. Endurance capacity for this “sprint” group almost doubled, from 26 to 51 minutes, and their leg muscles showed a significant 38% increase of our friend citrate synthase (CS), one of the desirable endurance enzymes. The control group, which was active (jogging, cycling, or aerobics) showed no changes.
It seemed like a fluke.
It had to be repeated, and it was. This time with an even higher bar for evaluation: an 18.6-mile (30 km) cycling test.
The sprint group followed the 30-second burst protocol. The control group performed more traditional moderate-intensity cycling for 60– 90 minutes at 60% VO2 Max. Both groups worked out 3x a week and were evaluated before and after with an 18.6-mile cycling test. The improvements were almost identical, as were the increases in muscle oxidative capacity.
Recognize that working long in the gym is often a form of laziness, an avoidance of hard thinking. Three to four hours per week or less than 15 minutes per week? The choice is yours— work long or work hard— but the results appear to be the same. Trust data instead of the masses."
Why? [If you don't care about the science, skip this part].
"The "secret" to why HIT is so effective is unclear. However, the study
by Gibala and co-workers also provides insight into the molecular
signals that regulate muscle adaptation to interval training. It appears
that HIT stimulates many of the same cellular pathways that are
responsible for the beneficial effects we associate with endurance
training."
And from NY Times article: “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles”, "Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy,
“changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on
endurance performance.”How do you have give it all you've got?
If you do cycling, you're crawling out of the stationary bike when you're done. If you swim, I don't know you're floating on the water. I don't really have an accurate definition for all-out state. Your heart beats like you're having a heart attack. Also, it takes quite a while for you to come back to normal state. You're very very very exhaustive at the end of the exercises. Yes, that's all you should feel and then you know you've gave it 100% of you or close to that.My comments:
- The belief of achieving endurance can only be attained through endurance training is obsolete.
- If the bouts of high-intensity interval training are to be effective, they have to be "all-out" exercise. These form of exercises, swimming, stationary cycling, elliptical machine, etc... , satisfy 1. Low impact. 2. You can go all out. You should not do running for this 100% effort exercise due to the impact of pounding. If the only kind of exercise that you are doing is walking 50 meters from the bus stop to your house, and then you start running like a horse, you will risk injure yourself! Your muscles, tendons and ligaments are not tuned for this.
- The other alternative way to do this is doing 10 one-minute sprints with about one minute of rest in between, still three times a week.
- Make sure you time your breaks! If you take 1 minute after the first exercise but take 5 minutes after the firth one, the effect of this whole idea of high-intensity training would probably compromised.
- Although the title is catchy, 6 minutes per week are only the time you do exercise. If you also count 4 min rest between bursts, the total time will be 4*3 + 4*0.5 = 14 min and up to 4*6 + 7*0.5 = 27.5 min if you do 4 and 7 repetitions respectively. Or 19 minutes for the 10 one-minute sprints alternative. Even though, that's significantly less than 2-3 hours a week for traditional endurance training.
- For the more studious readers, you can read this article in NY Times here, when Martin Gibala did experiments on mice and college students. Or you can google him.
- To my Vietnamese readers, if you find at some points the article is not crystal clear, let me know. I may consider translating it.
Leave some comments. Let me know if you trust this or not. Let me know what you think. Ask me questions. What should I do so you can easily apply this? Thanks for reading.
Reference:
- Ferriss, Timothy (2010-12-14). The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (Kindle Locations 6914-6919). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
- Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week?:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/ - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123639.htm
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