22 ms·
Hourly 4-second sprints prevent impairment of postprandial fat metabolism
- cjohnson318 6y ago"Four men and four women participated in two trials" I'm not a medical researcher; is this a normal size for a study?
- sbr464 6y agoI thought the exact same. I honestly think this post should be deleted on that fact.
- bcoates 6y agoIt's enough for such a large effect, but obviously it doesn't tell us anything about the long-term impact of trying it as a lifestyle.
- tgv 6y agoThere are two problems: "No differences (p>0.05) between interventions were found for plasma insulin or glucose AUC." That can very, very much be explained by lack of power. But the main problem is that a group of 8 people has a very low probability of generalizing across the population. And of course, very few people sit 8 hours without moving. That said, it's more than promising enough for further research.
- monkeypizza 6y agoSay you are trying to distinguish between a placebo and a cyanide pill; test subjects are young rats (base rate of death extremely low). How large of a sample size do you need? I think one control, one test subject is enough to be certain, because the base rate of death is insanely low, when measured on a per-minute basis. Sample sizes can be small and still very significant when the effect is large.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y agoI would want about four of each rat still. The control could die of something else...
- samatman 6y agoI'm quite confident the only reason to use four rats in a study of cyanide is that you really want to kill two rats.
- steerablesafe 6y agoYeah, because you already have a very well-established prior on the effects of cyanide.
- buran77 6y ago> when the effect is large You mean when the effect is guaranteed. Cyanide is reasonably guaranteed to have the expected effect every time which is why you don't even need the control. With only 4 test subjects you can't really draw a strong conclusion.
- a3n 6y agoMaybe it's a relatively quick and cheap way to decide if it's worth doing larger and longer studies.
- alexilliamson 6y agoVoice of reason
- mywittyname 6y agoMedical research is expensive to conduct, so it's not uncommon to see N<20. Additionally, more data is not necessarily better data since humans lie and it's unethical to force their compliance, so there's more of a risk for bad data with large trials. And throwing out bad data is selection bias.
- PacketPaul 6y agoOk 4s/hour. 8 hours/day of sitting. So 32s day of total exercise!?! Still probably will not do it.
- benjaminl 6y agoThat is also how I initially read it, but the paper states that there were 5 sprints per hours for a total of 160 seconds a day. From the paper: > i.e.; 4-s x 5 per h x 8-h = 160-s per day
- dr_dshiv 6y agoStill probably would not do it. But why? I wonder what other exercise modality this could be replaced with. Do 3 squats?
- covidSurvivor19 6y agoI mean this sounds way healthier to me than endless cardio. That is much more taxing for the body. This short sprints could certainly spike metabolism without the running out of limiting factors that happens with endurance exercise. Net effect, your body stays in a physiologically high activity state without producing excess stress hormones. Sign me up
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
- pazimzadeh 6y agoThe control group was asked to sit for 8 hours straight, whereas the experimental group sprinted five times. It would be more interesting if they compared it to standing up.
- masklinn 6y ago> whereas the experimental group sprinted five times Per hour.
- onetimemanytime 6y ago>>"Four men and four women participated in two trials" My uncle smoked 3 packs a day and lived to 90. other than that, maybe just getting up and putting strains even for seconds might do the job /trick our body.
- puranjay 6y agoThis study used cycling sprints. I wonder if a similar effect would be observed with say, a set of pushups or squats every hour
- zadler 6y agoOr burpees.
- swader999 6y agoSure why not? Mix it up.
- alecco 6y agoThey probably picked cycling because it's easier to measure and there's less variation. And there's much more literature on it (e.g. Tabata/HIIT protocols). I feel squats properly done would be even better as more muscles are involved. With the added benefit of not needing equipment.
- huffmsa 6y agoProbably. But I think the body gets Abit tricked when the legs come into play in a locomotive fashion. Particular sprinting. It's primal.
- chronogram 6y agoLeg muscles are a lot larger. You can easily stay warm while cycling or walking at a brisk pace in the winter. Less so when standing still and doing pushups or situps.
- steve76 6y agoHow about a slow release exercise pill? Or hit by an acoustic or EM signal?
- gfxgirl 6y agoI'm confused. "Hourly 4s sprints" sounds like one 4 second sprint every hour but the second paragraph of the summary says > Purpose > This study determined if the interruption of prolonged sitting (i.e.; 8-h of inactivity) with hourly cycling sprints of only 4-s duration each (i.e.; 4-s x 5 per h x 8-h = 160-s per day; SPRINTS) improves PPL. The 4-s sprints employed an inertial load ergometer and were followed by 45-s of seated rest. That's 5 per hour not 1 or once every 12 minutes
- tofflos 6y ago> This study determined if the interruption of prolonged sitting (i.e.; 8-h of inactivity) with hourly cycling sprints of only 4-s duration each (i.e.; 4-s x 5 per h x 8-h = 160-s per day; SPRINTS) improves PPL. The 4-s sprints employed an inertial load ergometer and were followed by 45-s of seated rest. So you would need to take a 5 x (4-s sprint + 45-s rest) = 245 seconds exercise break from work every hour and in return you could get the following results? > No differences (p>0.05) between interventions were found for plasma insulin or glucose AUC. However, SPRINTS displayed a 31% (408±119 vs. 593±88 mg/dL/6h; p=0.009) decrease in plasma triglyceride incremental AUC and a 43% increase in whole body fat oxidation (P=0.001) when compared to SIT. Does "whole body fat oxidation" mean that the an average male calorie burn of 2500 per day would be multiplied with 1,43 to 3575 calories per day?
- swader999 6y agoFairly easy to incorporate this into a pomodoro cadence. Every other break do some high intensity bursts.
- renewiltord 6y agoWell, presumably you can work while resting. Honestly, I haven't found that to be too hard (I take a mid-day bike ride up the hill here in SF).
- mikekchar 6y ago> Does "whole body fat oxidation" mean that the an average male calorie burn of 2500 per day would be multiplied with 1,43 to 3575 calories per day? It seems extremely unlikely to me. I hesitate to bring up the 2nd law of thermodynamics because I know if frustrates a lot of people in these discussions. However, bear with me. "Calories" in this context refers to kilocalories. Burning 1 kilocalorie produces enough energy to raise 1 kg of water 1 degree C. So burning an extra 1000 kilocalories per day means producing enough heat to raise the body temperature of a 100 kg person 10 degrees over the course of a day. Although our bodies are really good at cooling, that's not an insigificant amount of heat. It's of a magnitude that is relatively easily measured. If such a phenomenon were to exist, it seems inconceivable to me that the researchers would not try to measure it. I mean it is literally the holy grail of dieting. I think it is considerably more likely that the effect they are measuring is very interesting, but does not extrapolate out to this logical conclusion.
- Drakar1903 6y agoAnd here I thought this was about software development.
- zadjii 6y agoAccording to the [site guidelines](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html): > Hacker News Guidelines > What to Submit > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. I'd say this falls under "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
- James_Henry 6y agoI think they were trying to make a joke about sprints and agile software development.
- zebnyc 6y agoDon't we need to warm up before doing any max intensity exercise to prevent injury.
- Barrin92 6y agoI've read conflicting information about warming up over the years but it at least appears to me that the consensus is slowly moving away from several common exercises such as stretching, which apparently even seems to have negative effects.
- swader999 6y agoStretching will decrease strength immediately after. Dynamic warm-ups where you work up to the range of motion of play is what you want. Greasing the groove is another method to Google. Stretching is useful to increase range of movement if you don't have enough for a given sport. Injury prevention is more focused on eliminating muscle imbalances.
- AngryData 6y agoIt is mostly deep stretching before exercise that seems to be the biggest target. Light quick stretching should still be fine to prevent injury. Deep stretching is only good for maintaining or increasing flexibility especially when bulking up, but should been done as its own exercise with rest afterwards.
- 3131s 6y agoStatic stretching should be avoided at the beginning of a workout. I had assumed this was about sprinting in the sense of running as fast as possible, which would be absolutely insane to do without a warmup. I take around 20 minutes to warm up for sprinting, doing very specific exercises to prepare. On a stationary bike though, because the range of motion is much more controlled, I can see it being a little less of an issue.
- huffmsa 6y agoSince you're doing this every 12 minutes, you'd stay relatively warm all day. American football players don't need to warm up every time they come off the sidelines
- mirimir 6y agoOK, so what's a "4-s sprint"? I presume that this employs a stationary bicycle. But against what resistance? Also, four seconds hardly seems enough to even reach maximum exertion.
- mahesh_rm 6y agoJumping cold out of your couch/chair and sprinting 5 seconds every hour, multiple times a day, sounds to me like an optimized 'quickly destroy most of your body joints' routine.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- swader999 6y agoYou can do low impact. Burpees aren't too rough.
- ddek 6y agoBurpees are actually super high impact. Done warm, let alone cold, they can cause patellar tendonopathy, back strains and hamstring strains. This paper says cycling - I’d be inclined to agree. Obviously that’s a barrier to entry, because you’d want an indoor stationary bike. On low resistance settings the risk of injury would be very low coming in cold.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rawland 6y agoIt happened on a stationary bicycle trainer -> Low load on joints, as most of the weight rests on the saddle and handlebars.
- jvln 6y agoSearching for exercises having an efect and taking as less time as possible looks like panacea.
- rawland 6y agoTL;DR: An hourly ~5min cycling exercise on a stationary bicycle trainer results in a 31% decrease of area under the curve (AUC)* of postprandial triglyceride levels in blood plasma and a 43% increase in whole body fat oxidation. The cycling exercise consisted of five 4-sec all out sprints followed by 45-sec rests. The exercise was performed once per hour during 8 hours of sitting and compared to 8 hours of pure sitting. [*]: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/132777/what-does-auc-stand-for-and-what-is-it https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/132777/what-does-a...
- pantulis 6y agoI think this is mostly a curiosity. Why do people think this is relevant for HN? Is people seriously trying to "hack" their metabolism? What for? Being able to spend, say, 16 hours sitting in front of a computer typing code away?
- lvturner 6y agoAs I get older, I more and more realise the negative health impacts of a mostly sedantry job - anything to offset that is surely in the interests of most HN readers
- bigmit37 6y agoBeing sedentary seems to be really bad for you and programmers are the forefront of this as we spend lots of time motionless. There seems to be correlations with major diseases as well as muscular skeleton pain. It’s not even 16 hours. Even 8 hours seems to be bad,(especially if it’s not spread out), since we live in a pretty sedentary world now. I’ve been following these threads on hacker news as I want to prevent as much pain and diseases as I can.
- xchaotic 6y agoThis was done on purpose Every hour but you can get similar results with one longer Training session. Heck I only train 3-5 days per week and problem burning fat with enough intensity or volume.
- jhaddow 6y agoWho has time to do 4s sprints???
- wscott 6y agoyeah because after my 4s sprint it will take me 20s to walk back to my desk.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoPast the rest of the open office floor-plan as sales stares.
- jordiburgos 6y agop(0.05) and p(0.0001) with 8 people sample? It is hard to understand those probabilities.
- huffmsa 6y agoAh, the sprint is being rediscovered once again for it's ability to squeeze maximum effect into minimum working time. If you get a chance, try to find a copy of "A System of Multi-year Training in Weightlifting" by A.S. Medvedyev (a translation of the 1980s Soviet Olympic Weightlifting program for coaches). It's the culmination of decades of studies across the entire Soviet athletics program about what works and what doesn't. The summer programming shifts almost exclusively to sprinting, and only a few hundred meters per day, because that's what they found is enough work for anyone who isn't a specialized running athlete. I follow it as soon as I can ever summer and it's immediately obvious that my metabolism increases. IMO the secret about sprinting vs distance running is that your body can't optimize for efficiency. You can marginally increase ATP capacity, but the only thing getting better at maximum effort sprints does is make you able to produce more power while doing maximum effort sprints. It stays hard, without needing to increase volume much over time.
- lejboua 6y agoCan you plz share how do you incorporate sprints in your training plan?
- neurobashing 6y agoIt was strange at first, when everyone got their Apple Watch and started standing up, seemingly at random, in meetings. “Gotta meet my stand goal!” Gonna be really weird when they go tear-assing down the hallway
- myself248 6y agoOop, someone's got the zoomies!
- sAbakumoff 6y agoI am curious if the same effect could be achieved if I just jump on jumping rope for 20 sec every our? I can even jump for a minute!
- Gys 6y ago'Hourly 4-second sprints' is actually 5 times an hour 4 secs (bicycle) sprints. So it is more precisely about every 12 minutes. I do not understand why it says 'hourly'? Because it sounds less often?
- gdulli 6y agoIt must be one set of 5 reps per hour, not one sprint every 12 minutes. That's how exercise usually works, and the study is concerned with the "least amount of exercise that can acutely improve fat metabolism and other aspects of health". Activity spaced out every 12 minutes would be disruptive and defeat that purpose.
- logfromblammo 6y agoArticle states 4s activity followed by 45s seated rest, repeated 5 times. So you're actually occupied with the workout task for 4m+05s every hour, even though only 20s of that is sprinting.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoAnd it's not an activity you'll do at or near your desk, so you're going to have to travel somewhere to do it.
- jnwatson 6y agoIt depends on your desk.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y agoTrue. And the location of said desk.
- Gys 6y agoThank you, so that explains the 45-s rest mentioned. I assume then each 4-s workout is followed by a 45-s rest. So 49-s * 5 = 245-s (4 min) spend each hour on the excercises.
- throwaway55554 6y ago> "Prevent Impairment" So, is that a double negative and this would mean it improves fat metabolism?
- exabrial 6y agoI'm 7 pounds into the "Covid 15" despite daily exercise. I may give this a try and see if I see results
- knicholes 6y agoRight before the pandemic, I entered a body composition challenge that just ended. I lost ten lbs of fat and gained one lb of muscle. Another guy lost 6 lbs of fat and gained 4 lbs of muscle. You can't trust your scale. Go by the scale in addition to how you look, how your clothes fit, and your body measurements. For better data, get a Dexa body scan.
- bfieidhbrjr 6y agoYeah go irradiate yourself just to find out how fat you are, what could go wrong?
- brewdad 6y agoTrue, but if my activity levels have dropped, I can be pretty sure my weight gain is almost entirely fat. Now that I've gotten back to being more active the past two weeks, I hope to see some results in the mirror before I worry too much about the number on the scale. In my case, the scale number will regularly fluctuate a few pounds just based on time of day or short-term variations in activity and diet.
- exabrial 6y agoThere's only a handful of them[Dexa] in the USA, if I want to find something local (Kansas City) what should I be looking for?
- knicholes 6y agoI'm from Utah, so I really have no clue, but a quick search revealed this: https://www.dexafit.com/locations/kansas/kansas-city https://www.dexafit.com/locations/kansas/kansas-city
- rkagerer 6y agoHow about jumping jacks?
- mywittyname 6y agoProbably not, jumping jacks don't take much effort. Think about for how long people can sprint at their maximum speed: 3 minutes would be world class. But doing 3 minutes of jumping jacks is pretty easy.
- anentropic 6y agoNow that's Agile
- davio 6y agoWe've found that continuous flow works better than 4-second sprints.
- 99_00 6y agoIf tried an intense exercise, regardless of how long, without warming up I would hurt myself really fast.
- valuearb 6y ago> Four men and four women participated Is all exercise science this weak?
- rodonn 6y agosadly, almost all of it is based on samples around this small.