More About Sprinting-the Quick Way to Fitness

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I have written before about the joys of sprinting - basically breaking up a short cardiovascular workout into short extremely intense all out sprints with short breaks in between. For example, we have a big hill at Parrot Cay between the hotel road near the gym and beach and the spa road. It's maybe 1500 feet and all uphill. So for my cardio when it's not sauna hot outside I run up the hill as fast as I can and jog down, repeating until I simply can't do any more (maybe 2-4 times depending on my energy that day). I also do this on the bike, and even on the treadmill with the incline at 15.

So when I saw the NY Times article Can You Get Fit In Six Minutes a Week? I knew the answer was Yes.

A few years ago, researchers at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan put rats through a series of swim tests with surprising results. They had one group of rodents paddle in a small pool for six hours, this long workout broken into two sessions of three hours each. A second group of rats were made to stroke furiously through short, intense bouts of swimming, while carrying ballast to increase their workload. After 20 seconds, the weighted rats were scooped out of the water and allowed to rest for 10 seconds, before being placed back in the pool for another 20 seconds of exertion. The scientists had the rats repeat these brief, strenuous swims 14 times, for a total of about four-and-a-half minutes of swimming. Afterward, the researchers tested each rat’s muscle fibers and found that, as expected, the rats that had gone for the six-hour swim showed preliminary molecular changes that would increase endurance. But the second rodent group, which exercised for less than five minutes also showed the same molecular changes.

The question then became whether this also held true for humans based on new research from Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.

In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.

Each of the two groups exercised three times a week. After two weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even though the one group had exercised for six to nine minutes per week, and the other about five hours. Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness were evident equally in both groups.

So if you avoid exercise because you don't have the time or because the thought of spending half an hour on the bike or treadmill bores you to tears, this means you have no more excuses! Surely you can do a few minutes a week ;-).

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Tags: Cross Training, Fitness, Fitness News, Health, Interval training