This post highlights a type of exercise which has grown in popularity.
The most commonly cited barrier to exercise is a lack of time. Exercise is good for you, not only because it comes with beneficial feelings for your mental state (confidence, self-efficacy, mood), but it is a natural way of preventing disease. Obesity is sky rocketing to insane amounts. Being overweight is becoming the norm - and don’t get me wrong, it’s ok to love yourself and your body - but beware, it is a proven fact that if your waistline is greater than what is recommended, you are automatically at risk for type 2 diabetes which leads to other complications (high blood pressure, heart disease). It’s just a known fact now that overweight = concerns, and it should be a great motivator to get moving. This is why in the last decade, HIIT (or high-intensity interval training) has received a lot of attention.
Interval training is characterised by brief, short duration intense efforts, interspersed by periods of recovery (active or low-intensity). In short, they are sprints.
However, initial studies employed very, very, intense protocols (4 sets of 30 seconds ALL OUT cycling, against quite a heavy resistance, with 4 min of rest in between, 3 times a week) to see what effects there were. In summary, sprints are very effective and have been shown repeatedly to induce effects similar to, and even better than the typical 1 hour gym cycle. It essentially shows that you can have a trade off between exercise volume and intensity. Physiological benefits include: improved overall fitness, improved structure/function of blood vessels, improved insulin sensitivity/blood sugar, improved “power house” of your muscle - i.e. the mechanical machinery that helps convert and produce energy for your muscles have greater capacity to do so, increased power output, and improved body composition.
Since these initial studies, groups have attempted to lower the intensity and find a more accommodating protocol which suits those who are less accustomed to exercise. This protocol is known as the ‘practical’ low-volume HIIT. It involves 1 min of cycling at about 80% of your heart rate max, interspersed by 1 min of rest, for a total of 10 times. This has been shown to be effective in improving overall fitness and improving indices of diabetes (insulin sensitivity, glucose control).
I was involved in conducting a study a couple of years ago which decided to lower this even further because these sprints are still bloody hard. Check this out, we lowered it to:
3 sets x 20 second all-out sprints x 1 min of rest -- 3 times a week.
This means 1 min of total exercise in 1 session, and 3 min of exercise per week.
This protocol, done on overweight men and women, improved overall fitness, and indices of diabetes/muscle health. Now, this isn’t to say that you should only do 1/3 min of exercise per week. The guidelines still say that moderate-intensity exercise should be done 150 min per week, or high-intensity exercise a total of 75 min per week. However, this study shows that you can incorporate a short version of exercise during days/periods where you have limited durations to exercise, and it is highly effective.
Cool eh? The best part is, you don’t have to stick to these protocols. In fact, the research published has infinite combinations of these variables, interchanging the number of sprints, the intensity, the rest periods, etc.
This protocol is super easy to employ in the gym. For example, if you were to try out the 3x20s protocol, what you can do is go to the gym, hop on a bike, warm up for 3 min, then tell yourself that you’ll start sprinting at 3 min 10 seconds.... so at 3 min 5 seconds, you start to cycle as fast as you can while simultaneously increasing the resistance on the bike (how hard you go is up to you) and then try to keep your cycling as fast as possible until 3 min 30 seconds, then take 1 min of rest... repeat.... simple!
