The original article I read had kind of a gaudy title--something like "stay fit exercising six minutes a week." Despite the snake-oil-salesman sound of it the article was based on a medical study that investigated the effects of interval training. Even more to the point, the subjects in the study rode exercise bikes. So it seemed to offer some promise with respect to my idea of regularly "changing things up" in our routine and a way to possibly cut back healthfully on our regimen for part of the year.
Anyway, without further ado, here's an article similar to the one I read:
Fitness 'takes 6 minutes a week'
Monday, June 6, 2005
Short sprints are more beneficial than long runs, the study says.
LONDON, England -- Six minutes of pure, hard exercise a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity, according to a new study.
"Short bouts of very intense exercise improved muscle health and performance comparable to several weeks of traditional endurance training," said Martin Gibala, an associate professor at Canada's McMaster University.
The research, published in the June edition of the Journal of Applied Physiology, says that repeatedly doing very intense exercise such as sprinting resulted in unique changes in skeletal muscle and endurance capacity, similar to training that requires hours of exercise each week.
Sixteen subjects were used in the test: Eight who performed two weeks of sprinting at intervals, and eight who did no exercise training.
The program had in it four and seven 30-second bursts of "all out" cycling followed by four minutes of recovery time, three times a week for two weeks.
Researchers found that endurance capacity in the sprint group increased on average from 26 minutes to 51 minutes, whereas the control group showed no change.
The muscles of the trained group also showed a significant increase in a chemical known as citrate synthase, an enzyme that is indicative of the tissue's power to use oxygen.
"Sprint training may offer an option for individuals who cite lack of time as a major impediment to fitness and conditioning," said Gibala.
"This type of training is very demanding and requires a high level of motivation, however less frequent, higher intensity exercise can indeed lead to improvements in health and fitness."
Extracted from McMaster university journal of Applied physiology, discovered and published by Martin Gibala.
Looks very interesting to me, and very much along the lines of the experiment I wanted to try during cycling off-season anyway. To refresh our memories a bit on that, I wondered, since riding stationary bikes one half hour four days a week seemed to keep us in pretty good cycling form over the winter months, what would be the effect of riding for only fifteen minutes four days a week during part of the cycling off-season?
Well, this article has given me an idea about how to implement that. I think we'll try riding fifteen minutes per session during a certain part of this winter--say, from December through March. But instead of the usual high rpm, steady heart-rate pace we've been keeping on our half hour rides, we'll do intervals. At the moment I'm envisioning thirty-second intervals where we go all out followed by four minutes or so of liesurely riding followed by another thirty-second burst, etc, until the 15 minute period is up.
At this point, I'm still planning exactly how we'll implement this strategy. But it should be something very close to what I've just described. I'm anxious to try it out and see what the effects will be. And you can rest assured that once I determine the particulars I'll report them in this blog--as well as the results at the end of our trial period for this method.
On other related fronts, my shoulder--even after our third strength-training session following our vacation--continues to feel ok. I'm hoping the break from exercise allowed it to fully heal. I'll keep posting here on that topic as well.
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