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1min high-intensity exercise 3x a week improves fitness as much as 3x aerobics (2016)

376 points by gasull 4y ago

bschwarz 4y ago
...in sedentary men
thejackgoode 4y ago
The title is not really honest, it’s a 10 min “commitment”. If you frame it correctly, the result isn’t that surprising
- urthor 4y ago
  The concept is still worth knowing. Intersperse sprinting into your jogging is extremely important. Or other similar intensity lifts.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    Fast sprints, fartlek [Swedish], in jogging was a thing 20+ years ago (Wikipedia says it was developed in 1930s). I got a knee injury and haven't jogged since, is it still a thing? Is this HIT a refinement of that?
- lanewinfield 4y ago
  Sure, but the high intensity is 1 minute total. 2 min warm up 20 sec sprint 2 min maintain 20 sec sprint 2 min maintain 20 sec sprint 3 min cooldown
  - cesaref 4y ago
    There is no control of not doing the 20 sec sprints, so i'm not sure how I can conclude that the sprints give the benefit vs the low intensity work surrounding it.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > There is no control of not doing the 20 sec sprints, so i'm not sure how I can conclude that the sprints give the benefit vs the low intensity work surrounding it. This. We cannot tell, from the experiment, how much of a difference each high intensity section in the 10m contributes.
    - niemandhier 4y ago
      Control would not be safe, going from 500w to idle can cause cardiac problems. Especially with elevated bmi.
      - balfirevic 4y ago
        Control would be doing 10 minutes of low intensity.
    - testmasterflex 4y ago
      Empirically, it’s obviously necessary.
- niemandhier 4y ago
  I disagree. The time durations differ by factor 5, more so it’s 1 min 500w + 9 min 50w compared to 45 minutes 110 w. To frame that: Physical Labour can be sustained for longer durations at about 75w, and you cannot safely jump from 500w to resting state without a cooldown. So imho the paper delivers what it promises.
- Prcmaker 4y ago
  I'd like to understand where this title came from. The title within the article, while longer, seems much more reasonable a statement: "Twelve Weeks of Sprint Interval Training Improves Indices of Cardiometabolic Health Similar to Traditional Endurance Training despite a Five-Fold Lower Exercise Volume and Time Commitment"
- cardanome 4y ago
  Time commitment is not really the limiting factor as to why people are out of shape anyway. HIIT is not a cheat code. Yes, technically it is just 1 minute of active exercise but oh boy will that minute feel like ages, especially if you are out of shape. It should intuitively make sense that that low intensity over a longer time and higher intensity over a shorter time would equal to roughly the same results (no exactly, they train slightly different things but let's keep it simple.) Whether you do HIIT or low intensity exercises, at the end of the day you still have to put in the work. There is no shortcut. People that are completely out of shape can do basically anything and it will give them great results. The hard part is building a habit of exercise.
Manfred 4y ago
From the abstract: > We investigated whether sprint interval training (SIT) was a time-efficient exercise strategy to improve insulin sensitivity and other indices of cardiometabolic health to the same extent as traditional moderate-intensity continuous training […] Researchers are not claiming improved overall fitness as the Hacker News title seems to suggest.
- pocketarc 4y ago
  True, that seems a bit misleading. But what is fitness if not something that can be measured as "indices of cardiometabolic health"?
  - Manfred 4y ago
    I think fitness encompasses everything that makes you physically capable. Cardio metabolic is just one part of that.
pocketarc 4y ago
The fact that 1 minute of high intensity exercise (in 10 minutes of lower-intensity stuff) is as good as 50 minutes of moderate-intensity training does really put things into perspective. What I wonder now is - what if you combine both? What if you do 50 minutes of moderate exercise but intersperse that with that same 1 minute of all-out sprints? Is there a bigger benefit, or is it inconsequential? And another question, one that I couldn't tell from looking at the page: What about a control group doing 10-minute moderate exercise? It'd be great to compare the 10-minute moderate vs the 10-minute with the high-intensity exercise. Since these were sedentary men, it stands to reason the there's a big amount of low-hanging fruit that might well be captured by the simple 10 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise. I'm sure it won't fare as well as the 50 minute group, but if it's close enough to be statistically insignificant, the conclusion would change to "any exercise is better than no exercise, even 10 minutes of moderate whatever".
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  They studied sedentary men. > Methods: Sedentary men [...] performed three weekly sessions of SIT [...] or MICT [...] for 12 weeks or served as non-training controls
- MengerSponge 4y ago
  It's probably far more beneficial to save the max effort for the very end. Fatigue and lactic acid concentration work in your favor that way
  - matsemann 4y ago
    It depends. While your total work done might be higher like that, training for longer with the lactic in your muscles also has some benefits. Doing the intensity earlier also increases your heart rate earlier, and it will probably remain higher throughout, which can be a good thing if your goal is to work it.
    - MengerSponge 4y ago
      Spending more time in Zone 3 is harder, sure, but it isn't more beneficial than spending that time in Zone 2. You're training different metabolic states, and working harder/suffering more doesn't actually matter.
urthor 4y ago
https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cites=11126040610832126753&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cites=1112604061083212... Citations of said paper.
mftb 4y ago
It's also a great way to get injured. Then you can't exercise at all.
- aqme28 4y ago
  Is it actually any more injury prone?
  - mftb 4y ago
    It's a fair question. I didn't see any mention of injury in this study and I never see it discussed in these threads. I also admit my bias, I'm an older runner, and I've seen a lot of people struggling, who've unwittingly, been over-optimizing training and just over-training.
  - brodouevencode 4y ago
    As with everything fitness, it depends.
andy_ppp 4y ago
As I understand it the body has different energy systems- one that is aerobic and takes hours over months and years to train and anaerobic that all out short efforts can train. Everything in between these two is arguably time wasted. I think the title here is misleading and looking at another comment it’s not what the paper says, “it improved insulin sensitivity and other indices of cardio-metabolic health”.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  > Everything in between these two is arguably time wasted. This is if we're myopically focusing on cardiovascular and metabolic outcomes.
- xarope 4y ago
  There is plenty of literature to show the body has 3 main energy systems (phosphagen, glycolytic - aka anaerobic, and mitochondrial respiration aka aerobic), and many activities are a combination of all these energy systems. Further, doing pure anaerobic activities without warmups (which are more aerobic in nature) would increase injury risk; whilst low intensity/aerobic oriented activities have been shown to improve general health and well being, which would also be important to maintain an athlete's ability to train over a longer period of time. So perhaps it's not as polar nor "time" wasting as you think as you think.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
  I’m sorry but this makes no sense: > the body has different energy systems- one that is aerobic and takes hours over months and years to train and anaerobic that all out short efforts can train. Everything in between these two is arguably time wasted. The body does indeed have aerobic and anaerobic energy systems but any chronic physiological adaptations to any exercise takes time.
  - andy_ppp 4y ago
mathieuh 4y ago
How do they define fitness? It seems their definition is quite narrow. I cycle, and basically in the winter I do shorter rides more often to hit the same overall distance as I would in the summer. It's just not enjoyable for me dealing with awful road conditions and freezing hands and feet. E.g. in winter I'll do four or five 40 km rides per week, but in summer I do two or three 40 km rides and one 100+ km ride per week. It always takes me six weeks or a couple of months at the start of summer to build back up to doing 100+ km rides, even though I'm doing the same distance and spending similar amounts of time.
- smcl 4y ago
  I don't think this is saying 1 minute of high-intensity sprints is better than all other exercise, if you're doing multiple 40+ km bike rides per week you're probably not the intended audience for this type of exercise. However, I do think it is fair to use the word "fitness" as short-hand for what they were measuring because the below (from the "Results" in the Abstract linked) is a bit of a mouthful and doesn't neatly fit in the title: " Peak oxygen uptake increased after training by 19% in both groups (SIT: 32±7 to 38±8; MICT: 34±6 to 40±8ml/kg/min; p<0.001 for both). Insulin sensitivity index (CSI), determined by intravenous glucose tolerance tests performed before and 72 hours after training, increased similarly after SIT (4.9±2.5 to 7.5±4.7, p = 0.002) and MICT (5.0±3.3 to 6.7±5.0 x 10-4 min-1 [μU/mL]-1, p = 0.013) (p<0.05). Skeletal muscle mitochondrial content also increased similarly after SIT and MICT, as primarily reflected by the maximal activity of citrate synthase (CS; P<0.001). The corresponding changes in the control group were small for VO2peak (p = 0.99), CSI (p = 0.63) and CS (p = 0.97). "
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
  From the abstract: > insulin sensitivity and other indices of cardiometabolic health The word “fitness” appears nowhere in the paper’s entire summary.
KVFinn 4y ago
The opposite extreme, slow zone-2 cardio, is important too. It takes forever, but the upside is you can burn through your Netflix queue while doing it.
stefan_ 4y ago
Oh good, another of the weekly studies that finds having sedentary people do a light exercise regimen of any kind sees their fitness improve just as others doing light exercise. Can't wait for the meta study of "it doesn't really matter what you do".
petesergeant 4y ago
It's 8 minutes, not one minute The people in the study were out of shape to start with The improved measures were insulin sensitivity index, peak oxygen uptake, and "skeletal muscle mitochondrial content" No change in body mass In conclusion, if you're out of shape, you can improve a limited number of fitness measures just as much doing 3x8 minutes of higher intensity exercise as much 3×45m less intense exercise over 12 weeks
- newaccount74 4y ago
  I think it was 10 minutes in total: 2min warmup 20sec max effort 2min recovery 20sec max effort 2min recovery 20sec max effort 3min cooldown
  - petesergeant 4y ago
    You’re right, I can’t count
- oxfordmale 4y ago
  Exercise doesn't result in changes in body mass (weight loss), unless accompanied with a diet. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/28/study-reveals-that-exercise-alone-wont-cause-weight-loss#:~:text=Exercise%20alone%20is%20not%20enough,extra%20calories%2C%20researchers%20have%20found https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/28/study-reveal....
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Yes it can. I had an injury that prevented me from cycling for over a year and slowly gained weight. It all came off after resuming a normal routine without dietary changes.
    - epolanski 4y ago
      Well whether you lose/gain weight depends on (caloriesIn - caloriesOut) it's no rocket science. If you didn't compensate anymore as much for lowering the calories out you're obviously going to gain weight.
chkgk 4y ago
The study apparently only involved male participants. The control group consists of 6, the two treatment groups of 10 and 9 participants. The total N of the study is 25 participants. They conduct a one-way ANOVA on the interaction of time and treatment group indicators. I conclude that the study is woefully underpowered. I do not trust the apparent significance of their results.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Every time I see a study with a big headline, it almost always has double digit participants. Very callous behavior.
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    First studies with new findings should be small, surely, so we can weed out effects to test with larger studies. The question is whether the larger studies are being done? The incentives are such that democratic governments need to be leading the research, IMO. How do we ensure at a national level (because studies probably need to be repeated in different nations) we're doing good science, backing up key results, informing the population what the better ways of behaving are?
- danieka 4y ago
  I really don't understand statistics. My interpretation of "the study is under-powered" is that since the study has so small groups it will be difficult to find any result that is statistically significant. But wouldn't that mean that for any effect to be significant the effect size would have to be huge? My hunch is that if you have a large enough group even very small effect sizes will be significant, but in small groups only the very largest effect sizes will be significant. Or am I simply bad at statistics?
  - sandgiant 4y ago
    There might be someone able to better explain this, but one way it could work wold be to say that for small samples any bad assumptions you make (such as variables or measurements being independent) will affect the result more than if you had a larger sample. The assumption I make to make this work is that dependencies are more likely to be drowned out by internal variation in a larger sample. So you get to pick which assumption you like better.
xarope 4y ago
As others below have pointed out, the study specifically targets certain markers, and these markers do not encompass "fitness" as we would expect. I learnt the lesson a long time ago that you need to train long and low as well as short and hard, so I'd like to repost this article from Mark Twight (if anybody has a better - or more original, link, please feel free to post it): https://equipesolitaire.com/blogs/discourse/85824260-no-free-lunch https://equipesolitaire.com/blogs/discourse/85824260-no-free...
- Fricken 4y ago
  The article is directed towards elite, competitive athletes who are already in shape and have a training history. At that level, yes, of course there is more to it than a few short sprint sessions each week. For about 15 years I've been relying on HIIT to go from being out of shape to in shape as quickly as I know how. Going from in shape to top fitness, and progressing from there is more involved, and sport specific.
  - moneywoes 4y ago
    What was your protocol?
    - Fricken 4y ago
      Last few times I've done it was sprinting on stairs. Typically I'll do a 10 minute warm-up, and then 3-8 sprints, 20-40 seconds each, with ~3 minute rests in between. However I'm not super particular about protocols. I just go out, redline my heart rate a few times and call it a session. Last summer I was sprinting stairs every 3 days for a month to prepare for a week of multi-pitch climbing (with huge approaches) in the Canadian Rockies. I whipped myself into pretty good condition for the trip and my body held up, but it wasn't until after that week of climbing mountains every day that I felt like I was in properly awesome condition.
      - xarope 4y ago
        Please excuse the bluntness, but I find it hard to believe that you only trained sprints every 3 days (so 2-3 times a week max) to train for huge approaches and multi-pitch climbing (I'm a trad climber and mountaineer too). I assume this was not done in a vacuum, but also included numerous days of climbing and approaches as well, so probably 3/week of climbing, other low intensity work, as well as your then added 2-3/week of sprints. And yes, I agree with your last statement, after 3 weeks in the mountains acclimating for a 7000m peak, even though we got snowed out and never summited, when I got back to ground zero I felt like my lungs and legs were invincible (for about a week, then the bottom dropped out and I went back to normal again!)
jonplackett 4y ago
All these many studies about 1 minute exercise don’t seem to take into account how long that fitness will last, and how likely you are to get injured. I started running about a year ago and the first thing you have to learn is there’s a bunch of body systems you need to improve - heart, ability to use oxygen, removal of lactic acid, strengthening your body so you don’t get injured and can therefore train continuously. Probably others. And they all are best adapted by training at different speeds and intensities. So you do some fast stuff and some _really_ slow stuff and some in the middle stuff. High intensity is definitely great exercise. It definitely does something that slow stuff doesn’t. But it doesn’t mean you should _only_ do high intensity.
- rintakumpu 4y ago
  As a former national-level 10km runner I can very much second this training regimen. However if your starting point is sedentary you are probably better off doing something that you like and can commit to, be it high-intensity or otherwise. Studies like these are important in showing various tradeoffs but shouldn't be used blindly and prescriptively.
  - jonplackett 4y ago
    Hey - congrats on national level 10k! Very impressive! When you say ‘this’ training regimen, do you mean the fast/slow/in between i described, or the one they talk about in the article? If the article then I’m gonna give it a try anyway!
- grogenaut 4y ago
  Agreed. Getting back into shape or higher shape is often focusing on the part of your body current letting you down. A simple loop is you sprint, your legs gas out... Squats or other exercise. Legs strong now, you can't breath hard enough... More core... Now your core is stronger than your legs are. Legs again. Then consider stabilizers (I'm currently unable to squat more till I strengthen those).. etc etc. As I get older I'm learning more and more about stabilizers and tendons don't strengthen as fast as they used to.
Aldipower 4y ago
Ok, guys go ahead and do it this way. I stick with my marathon training plan, "which just works"™. Of course, there are also high-intensity workouts included, but the foundation is based on "easy runs" and sightseeing with the bike. There are just no short-cuts. I call the title of the post BS.
- deleted 4y ago
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throwaway4good 4y ago
Is it not a bit of a scientific straw man? Most exercise classes, aerobics, CrossFit, whatever, contains bursts of high intensity exercise?
Tade0 4y ago
I've been doing something like this lately, only accidentally. The distance between my apartment and daycare is 1300m and there are three road/street crossings on my way, so especially on one 240m stretch of wide pavement I can go as fast as possible without endangering my toddler. I average no less than 6km/h on this route. I'm as sedentary as they get and indeed I'm seeing some improvements. That being said this wasn't the only recent lifestyle change, so it might well not be a significant component.
psychphysic 4y ago
Research is important for research sake. But can anyone explain why these studies are like cat nip to the public and tabloids? "Any and All exercise is worthwhile (up to a limit)" and "unhealthy food bad for you" Over and over and over again...
- oblio 4y ago
  Because a huge percentage of the populations (yours truly included) lives unhealthy lifestyles and they want an easy way out or they have aspirational goals (think New Year's resolutions) they will never reach and do like being reminded of them occasionally. And tabloids frequently get to use cute/sexy pics for these articles, so more clicks.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  There is a big demand for column inches.
rax0m 4y ago
What about bone strength though?
notyourday 4y ago
That's just another out of context study jumped on by people who absolutely positively want to find a way to justify sitting on their ass, eating excessive amount of ultra processed carbohydrates and moving as little as possible Huberman currently is doing a series on fitness with Galpin. I highly recommend listening/watching it to get the context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEYE-vcVKy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEYE-vcVKy8 TL;DR: there are different kinds of fitness and to be in a reasonable health over the long term one needs to have all of them.
- brodouevencode 4y ago
  Just came here to plug this - a lot of material, A LOT of material, and the latest one released today is nearly 5 hours. But if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff it's very much worth the listen.
bcd3169 4y ago
N = 27
arthurofbabylon 4y ago
In personal experience as a dedicated rock climber (traveling full time for half of the last 15 years), I can easily conclude that bursts of intense exercise accomplish a lot more for health and fitness than prolonged, more gentle workouts. Intensity readily builds muscle mass and coordinates muscle fibers, while fostering feelings of clarity and joy. It’s just the easier pathway to “being fit.” Climbers train for intensity. One can easily convert high-intensity fitness to low-intensity but prolonged fitness. The other direction does not happen. High-intensity and short-burst fitness is more malleable, capable of becoming any type of fitness. Ie, a climber with bouldering fitness transitioning to sport climbing will take just 2-3 weeks to attain good results, while a sport climber transitioning to bouldering will take at least two months. Boulderers and sport climbers can instantly perform on multi-pitch routes, without a transitional period. The intensity gradient from intense/short to gentle/prolonged is bouldering -> sport climbing -> multi-pitch. However, I have never been at peak climbing fitness without daily walks. The assumption I have always held is that walking resolves problems (much like what sleep accomplishes for tissues, immune responses, emotions, memory, and cognition). You’re walking, blood is flowing, the whole body is coordinated, you’re breathing through your nose, you can think… it’s integrative. Humans are designed to walk.
- nmca 4y ago
  Isn't this just a different thing? Bouldering builds peak strength, not really intensity in the sense it's meant here? Max hangs do not translate to watts you can do for a minute on a bike, right?
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    Bouldering requires leg strength and max effort output over a minute timespan. Heel hooks, slab, arete, bat hangs are all going to tax your lower body, and a good boulderer can put themselves in hell for a limited timespan, as it’s required for many problems. Climbing is so much more than pull up and grip strength.
- TheAlchemist 4y ago
  This may work in climbing, but as far as I know, it doesn't really work in cycling or running. Yes, you should do a bit of high-intensity, but also ~80% of your training in those disciplines should be rather low intensity. Basically one does not work without the other.
happypants23 4y ago
People actually benefit from both low-intensity and high-intensity exercise. One is not a substitute for the other. Endurance athletes know this. Low-intensity exercise conditions aerobic energy pathways (mitochondrial respiration) in ways that high-intensity exercise cannot.
MezzoDelCammin 4y ago
personally, I'd be cautious of using this article to build up an exercise routine. Yes, intervals / HIIT are really effective and they consume relatively little time. Being an egineer it's tempting to use this as a base for some sort of 80-20 heuristics and simply say "this is good enough" and cut the aerobics. But is it? It's definitely better than doing nothing. But if the goal is some sort of performance improvement (specially in endurance sports - cycling, running, etc.), 9 times out of 10 I'd go with what's today called "polarized training". The basic idea of polarized training is "yes, intervals are definitely useful to push the body further, but only after a buttload of cardio". The routine then looks something like for every one very low intensity, very long duration session a week, there's one or two shorter all-out interval sessions. The intervals alone would lead to a plateau pretty quickly... Happy to provide references in follow-ups, if anyone is interested.
- affgrff2 4y ago
  Interestingly, the polarized training you describe is also know as the 80/20 rule that specifically recommend the opposite (80% low intensity + 20% high intensity) of what you mean by 80-20 (do just 20% to gain 80% of results).
  - MezzoDelCammin 4y ago
    ah, misunderstanding. What I meant is the somewhat natural tendency to see the 80% gains in 20% effort and then say "80%, that's good enough".
- balfirevic 4y ago
  > But if the goal is some sort of performance improvement (specially in endurance sports - cycling, running, etc.) It probably isn't, for most non-athletes and people who don't have a sport hobby. > yes, intervals are definitely useful to push the body further, but only after a buttload of cardio I definitely won't be doing "a buttload of cardio", so we're back to square one - what is a good 80:20 heuristics that balances time investment, discomfort and results.
robochat42 4y ago
Doesn't high intensity exercise have a greater risk of injury ? For instance, they did sprint intervals here, I think that I might need a 15 minute run just to warm up my knees enough to do the sprints (getting older sucks).
- balfirevic 4y ago
  > they did sprint intervals here Cycling sprints, on exercise bike.
5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
1 second of super high intensity exercise 3x a week improves fitness as much as 59x aerobics
mateusfreira 4y ago
Devs next week: 0. git commit 1. git push 2. open an MR 3. powerlifting while the CI is running .... Business idea: powerlifting bars to homeoffices
- Kuytu 4y ago
  https://nordicrackandoffice.fi/en/ https://nordicrackandoffice.fi/en/
  - mateusfreira 4y ago
    OMG it already exists, thanks for sharing
adave 4y ago
There are low intensity but high impact moves as level called compound moves that work as well. Focus on 10+mins in VO2 max on your tracker and go from there.
amelius 4y ago
I have one question: why did it take humans so long to figure this out?
- GuB-42 4y ago
  I guess "exercising" is a relatively new thing in human history. Normally, calories are something you want to save, not something you want to lose. People worked out by doing actual work, training or playing. If you think about it, the idea sounds completely ridiculous. Doing a minute of painful of physical activity with no practical use because you are too busy not moving. If you go back in time with this idea people will probably ask you what crime you committed to deserve such punishment. For it to make sense, you need an unnatural combination of abundant food, sedentary work and little free time, which only recently became a thing for commoners.
deleted 4y ago
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twawaaay 4y ago
Everybody knows that high intensity exercise does more than low intensity ones per hour invested. At least in running world. The issues are, and especially when you are out of shape: * adherence -- it is difficult to keep people do hard, high intensity exercises regularly. Part of being a runner is learning to deal with pain but people who are out of shape are almost by definition new to this and are not yet accustomed to pain. * injuries -- especially when you are out of shape, the goal should be consistency over quality. Any injuries will immediately put you out of your high intensity training. And high intensity training with out of shape people is a recipe for lots of injuries. * volume -- while you can do a lot more per minute on high intensity exercise, you can do a lot more low intensity volume. You can quickly and safely build up to be able to do half an hour of slow jog a day even if you are overweight and out of shape. * recovery -- high intensity exercises have high recovery requirements. Do out of shape subjects know how to massage their muscles? How to stretch? How long to recover? Recovery will further cut the volume of training. An out of shape person may need 3-4 days of recovery after a short but hard, intense interval session. Normally, this is filled with low intensity running and intense sessions are limited to once a week to give time to recover. Even elite runners recognise how dangerous it is to do large volume of high intensity exercises and there is very popular, successful movement now to almost exclusively low intensity exercises and reserving high intensity mostly for the last stretch before the event. The main goal of this is to ensure injury-free training. So if I was taking care for out of shape patients and prescribing training regimen I would still tell them to do, for starters, easy, comfortable jogging rather than any high intensity exercise.
- paulcole 4y ago
  > Everybody knows that high intensity exercise does more than low intensity ones per hour invested. At least in running world. “Does more” is hella vague. As a 40-mile a week runner I find that low intensity runs “do more” for me because they’re more relaxing.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - infamousclyde 4y ago
chewbacha 4y ago
Only 25 men were used? How can we possibly extrapolate that to others??
roxgib 4y ago
n=10. n=6 for the control group. I stopped reading at that point.
mkl95 4y ago
I went from virtually no exercise to moderate exercise for 15min, 4 to 6 times a week. Mostly 2 to 3 minute rounds on a heavy punching bag. I wouldn't call it life changing from a physical point of view, at least not yet. But the mental benefits were there from the first month.
airbreather 4y ago
There is various science around from multiple sources that suggest that HIIT High Intensity Interval Training or SHIT Super High Intensity Training puts the body in a different mode for some time afterwards. When the heart is stimulated to between 80 and 95% capacity (depending on source of information) this then prompts physiological changes that last long past the exercise event. CSIRO in Australia has been researching this for many years and is the premium (though still slightly woeful) scientific body in Australia. Not many real hills where I live, but there is one nearby and you often see people sprinting up it (sometimes backwards) and walking down, multiple times. One good plain language summary (not from CSIRO) is: "The “LifeSprints” study by Boucher in 2011 suggests that in the lower intensity steady state cardio trials, not enough levels of epinephrine (adrenaline) were present to stimulate fat breakdown in the muscle cells. During and after higher intensity exercise epinephrine and norepinephrine floats around in the system which stimulates “hormone sensitive lipase” to start breaking down fat in the fat cells. Therefore, the presence of epinephrine could be considered a major lipoliptic factor in fat breakdown (Trapp, Chisholm & Boutcher, 2007). During higher intensity exercise reaching maximal levels, not only does the body switch to carbohydrate as a main source of energy, a by-product of the anaerobic system (as seen in maximal intensities) is lactic acid. Lactic acid is said to be a blocker of epinephrine."
jvm___ 4y ago
My best running times were in 2017 when I did a 7 minute workout for 90 days in a row. I was doing the routine twice by the end of the 90 days. The 7 minute workout was a fad in 2012? that promised the same results as this study. Minimal time effort, maximum results.
nottorp 4y ago
The real question is how do you get people to exercise something, anything, daily. Not what exactly they should do.
alz 4y ago
It looks like they made people do things that require more short term oxygen uptake and as a result they adapted to be able to uptake more oxygen in the short term. I wouldn't so readily dismiss the myriad of other physical adaptations that result from long term, high volume, low intensity exercise, such as improved bone density, better fat metabolism, stronger heart muscles, better endurance and resilience, better mental health and cognition etc.
ck2 4y ago
Sure okay on paper. Now show me the average 5K race time for each group. The 3x 45minute group would destroy the 8 minute sprint group. It's all in how you define "fitness"
- jononomo 4y ago
  Why are you so confident? See my other comment.
  - ck2 4y ago
    The way you trained was almost exactly the same as the 3x 45 minute group. What you call a 45 second sprint at the end is similar to what trained runners do after a run called strides. It has no similarity to the sprint training group. You did not say how many weeks you trained. It was roughly 20 miles per week which yes is enough to do a half-marathon in 1:40 for an average 35 year old man which is considered the "open" category (though races also do age-groups) Had you increased to 40 miles per week you could have done a marathon in around 3:25 Running has been studied for so many decades by so many people that it's almost a science with very few surprises unless someone turns out to be exceptionally genetically gifted.
    - jononomo 4y ago
      Thanks for the informative comment!
jononomo 4y ago
Back in 2011, I went through a phase in which I ran on the treadmill for 21 minutes several times a week. I would jog at 8-9 MPH for 2:15, then sprint all-out for 45 seconds at 10.5 or 11 MPH. The only other exercises I did were some light-weight squats and a handful of oddball machine exercises. I was also on a paleo diet. After I had been doing this for a few months (not more than 4 months) a friend of mine invited me to take part in a half-marathon. Prior to the half marathon, I only went on two long runs with my friend (over ten miles). When the big day came I finished the race in 99 minutes -- which is a 7:30/mile pace for the entire race. I was 35 years old at the time. I was astounded at how well I performed given my training regimen -- I ended up near the top of my age class!
marmada 4y ago
Can someone confirm what intensity is high intensity? E.g, I have a rowing machine that leaves mildly out of breath and makes my heart beat quickly, is that HIIT? Or is HIIT more like stair climbers, which cause me to almost collapse after doing them for 12+ minutes.
- finnh 4y ago
  If you can do it for more than 1 minute, than it's not high intensity. Not to say it's not a good-great workout, but it's not the HI in HIIT. Also - hello fellow punishment lover! I rowed in high school & college & used to own an erg and am considering buying another one. They are so. fucking. time. efficient (HIIT evangelism be damned).
- shlant 4y ago
  from the study - "'all-out' cycle sprints (~500W)"
jrochkind1 4y ago
It says "Free PMC article", but I'm having trouble finding anywhere to click to see the whole article instead of just abstract and citations. Can anyone help me get it, whether that's me missing a place to click, or getting around paywall?
- pfisherman 4y ago
  Click on “full text links”. You could also click the doi link address.
curiousllama 4y ago
Having dabbled in a couple different exercise disciplines, I’d encourage very small updates to your priors from this study. Every bodybuilder knows that you have to push to failure and rest a lot between sets. The term for low-intensity or unrested lifting is “junk volume.” Every runner knows that 80% of your volume should be easy. It’s called “80/20 training.” Every CrossFit bro knows you need both intensity and volume - and maximizing that over time is what’s important. They all work, but in different ways + for different reasons. There’s lots of studies that try to break the mold. Usually, they’re limited by the impracticality of a large N, or perfect adherence, or exogenous factors, or avoiding hype. It’s a limitation of the field. It just means things will go slower. Don’t worry too much about any one study.
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wantsanagent 4y ago
Has anyone got an optimized home setup for this strategy? What equipment and/or monitors do you have and what specific exercises do you do? How to you incentivize your consistent adherence?
- mokash 4y ago
  i'd recommend a rowing machine. targets a lot of muscles, allows high/low intensity cardio, and is low impact to help reduce the probability of injury
kilgnad 4y ago
I've done this for a decade. It's real. I exercise a couple minutes doing all out sprints 3-4x a week and it increased my VO2 max faster then running 5 miles everyday. I've tried both. The increase in performance is dramatic. Like you can bring yourself to way above average VO2 max performance doing HIIT on the daily. I want to emphasize though that one thing I noticed is that this is exclusively for VO2 max. I'm not sure if this type of exercise is good for the long term. It's good for increasing your performance.
glomgril 4y ago
If you are out of shape, do one set of pushups once a day (however many feels comfortable even if you have to cheat a bit). Start small, even just a couple, and gradually increase the reps over time. You will be blown away by the results after even 2-3 months. Probably works best if you are scrawny to start with but I imagine any out of shape person would benefit. Given it takes less than 1min per day, everyone has time for something like this.
deterministic 4y ago
I highly recommend reading “Body by Science”. It shows how you can improve your overall muscle strength spending just 15 min in the gym once a week. Perfect for people like me who hate going to the gym. It’s simple. It works. I am 50+ and way stronger now than I was before.
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376 points by gasull 4y ago

bschwarz 4y ago

...in sedentary men

thejackgoode 4y ago

The title is not really honest, it’s a 10 min “commitment”. If you frame it correctly, the result isn’t that surprising

urthor 4y ago
The concept is still worth knowing. Intersperse sprinting into your jogging is extremely important. Or other similar intensity lifts.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Fast sprints, fartlek [Swedish], in jogging was a thing 20+ years ago (Wikipedia says it was developed in 1930s). I got a knee injury and haven't jogged since, is it still a thing? Is this HIT a refinement of that?
lanewinfield 4y ago
Sure, but the high intensity is 1 minute total. 2 min warm up 20 sec sprint 2 min maintain 20 sec sprint 2 min maintain 20 sec sprint 3 min cooldown
- cesaref 4y ago
  There is no control of not doing the 20 sec sprints, so i'm not sure how I can conclude that the sprints give the benefit vs the low intensity work surrounding it.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > There is no control of not doing the 20 sec sprints, so i'm not sure how I can conclude that the sprints give the benefit vs the low intensity work surrounding it. This. We cannot tell, from the experiment, how much of a difference each high intensity section in the 10m contributes.
  - niemandhier 4y ago
    Control would not be safe, going from 500w to idle can cause cardiac problems. Especially with elevated bmi.
    - balfirevic 4y ago
      Control would be doing 10 minutes of low intensity.
  - testmasterflex 4y ago
    Empirically, it’s obviously necessary.
niemandhier 4y ago
I disagree. The time durations differ by factor 5, more so it’s 1 min 500w + 9 min 50w compared to 45 minutes 110 w. To frame that: Physical Labour can be sustained for longer durations at about 75w, and you cannot safely jump from 500w to resting state without a cooldown. So imho the paper delivers what it promises.
Prcmaker 4y ago
I'd like to understand where this title came from. The title within the article, while longer, seems much more reasonable a statement: "Twelve Weeks of Sprint Interval Training Improves Indices of Cardiometabolic Health Similar to Traditional Endurance Training despite a Five-Fold Lower Exercise Volume and Time Commitment"
cardanome 4y ago
Time commitment is not really the limiting factor as to why people are out of shape anyway. HIIT is not a cheat code. Yes, technically it is just 1 minute of active exercise but oh boy will that minute feel like ages, especially if you are out of shape. It should intuitively make sense that that low intensity over a longer time and higher intensity over a shorter time would equal to roughly the same results (no exactly, they train slightly different things but let's keep it simple.) Whether you do HIIT or low intensity exercises, at the end of the day you still have to put in the work. There is no shortcut. People that are completely out of shape can do basically anything and it will give them great results. The hard part is building a habit of exercise.

Manfred 4y ago

From the abstract: > We investigated whether sprint interval training (SIT) was a time-efficient exercise strategy to improve insulin sensitivity and other indices of cardiometabolic health to the same extent as traditional moderate-intensity continuous training […] Researchers are not claiming improved overall fitness as the Hacker News title seems to suggest.

pocketarc 4y ago
True, that seems a bit misleading. But what is fitness if not something that can be measured as "indices of cardiometabolic health"?
- Manfred 4y ago
  I think fitness encompasses everything that makes you physically capable. Cardio metabolic is just one part of that.

pocketarc 4y ago

The fact that 1 minute of high intensity exercise (in 10 minutes of lower-intensity stuff) is as good as 50 minutes of moderate-intensity training does really put things into perspective. What I wonder now is - what if you combine both? What if you do 50 minutes of moderate exercise but intersperse that with that same 1 minute of all-out sprints? Is there a bigger benefit, or is it inconsequential? And another question, one that I couldn't tell from looking at the page: What about a control group doing 10-minute moderate exercise? It'd be great to compare the 10-minute moderate vs the 10-minute with the high-intensity exercise. Since these were sedentary men, it stands to reason the there's a big amount of low-hanging fruit that might well be captured by the simple 10 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise. I'm sure it won't fare as well as the 50 minute group, but if it's close enough to be statistically insignificant, the conclusion would change to "any exercise is better than no exercise, even 10 minutes of moderate whatever".

deafpolygon 4y ago
They studied sedentary men. > Methods: Sedentary men [...] performed three weekly sessions of SIT [...] or MICT [...] for 12 weeks or served as non-training controls
MengerSponge 4y ago
It's probably far more beneficial to save the max effort for the very end. Fatigue and lactic acid concentration work in your favor that way
- matsemann 4y ago
  It depends. While your total work done might be higher like that, training for longer with the lactic in your muscles also has some benefits. Doing the intensity earlier also increases your heart rate earlier, and it will probably remain higher throughout, which can be a good thing if your goal is to work it.
  - MengerSponge 4y ago
    Spending more time in Zone 3 is harder, sure, but it isn't more beneficial than spending that time in Zone 2. You're training different metabolic states, and working harder/suffering more doesn't actually matter.

urthor 4y ago

https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cites=11126040610832126753&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cites=1112604061083212... Citations of said paper.

mftb 4y ago

It's also a great way to get injured. Then you can't exercise at all.

aqme28 4y ago
Is it actually any more injury prone?
- mftb 4y ago
  It's a fair question. I didn't see any mention of injury in this study and I never see it discussed in these threads. I also admit my bias, I'm an older runner, and I've seen a lot of people struggling, who've unwittingly, been over-optimizing training and just over-training.
- brodouevencode 4y ago
  As with everything fitness, it depends.

andy_ppp 4y ago

As I understand it the body has different energy systems- one that is aerobic and takes hours over months and years to train and anaerobic that all out short efforts can train. Everything in between these two is arguably time wasted. I think the title here is misleading and looking at another comment it’s not what the paper says, “it improved insulin sensitivity and other indices of cardio-metabolic health”.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
> Everything in between these two is arguably time wasted. This is if we're myopically focusing on cardiovascular and metabolic outcomes.
xarope 4y ago
There is plenty of literature to show the body has 3 main energy systems (phosphagen, glycolytic - aka anaerobic, and mitochondrial respiration aka aerobic), and many activities are a combination of all these energy systems. Further, doing pure anaerobic activities without warmups (which are more aerobic in nature) would increase injury risk; whilst low intensity/aerobic oriented activities have been shown to improve general health and well being, which would also be important to maintain an athlete's ability to train over a longer period of time. So perhaps it's not as polar nor "time" wasting as you think as you think.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
I’m sorry but this makes no sense: > the body has different energy systems- one that is aerobic and takes hours over months and years to train and anaerobic that all out short efforts can train. Everything in between these two is arguably time wasted. The body does indeed have aerobic and anaerobic energy systems but any chronic physiological adaptations to any exercise takes time.
- andy_ppp 4y ago

mathieuh 4y ago

How do they define fitness? It seems their definition is quite narrow. I cycle, and basically in the winter I do shorter rides more often to hit the same overall distance as I would in the summer. It's just not enjoyable for me dealing with awful road conditions and freezing hands and feet. E.g. in winter I'll do four or five 40 km rides per week, but in summer I do two or three 40 km rides and one 100+ km ride per week. It always takes me six weeks or a couple of months at the start of summer to build back up to doing 100+ km rides, even though I'm doing the same distance and spending similar amounts of time.

smcl 4y ago
I don't think this is saying 1 minute of high-intensity sprints is better than all other exercise, if you're doing multiple 40+ km bike rides per week you're probably not the intended audience for this type of exercise. However, I do think it is fair to use the word "fitness" as short-hand for what they were measuring because the below (from the "Results" in the Abstract linked) is a bit of a mouthful and doesn't neatly fit in the title: " Peak oxygen uptake increased after training by 19% in both groups (SIT: 32±7 to 38±8; MICT: 34±6 to 40±8ml/kg/min; p<0.001 for both). Insulin sensitivity index (CSI), determined by intravenous glucose tolerance tests performed before and 72 hours after training, increased similarly after SIT (4.9±2.5 to 7.5±4.7, p = 0.002) and MICT (5.0±3.3 to 6.7±5.0 x 10-4 min-1 [μU/mL]-1, p = 0.013) (p<0.05). Skeletal muscle mitochondrial content also increased similarly after SIT and MICT, as primarily reflected by the maximal activity of citrate synthase (CS; P<0.001). The corresponding changes in the control group were small for VO2peak (p = 0.99), CSI (p = 0.63) and CS (p = 0.97). "
rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
From the abstract: > insulin sensitivity and other indices of cardiometabolic health The word “fitness” appears nowhere in the paper’s entire summary.

KVFinn 4y ago

The opposite extreme, slow zone-2 cardio, is important too. It takes forever, but the upside is you can burn through your Netflix queue while doing it.

stefan_ 4y ago

Oh good, another of the weekly studies that finds having sedentary people do a light exercise regimen of any kind sees their fitness improve just as others doing light exercise. Can't wait for the meta study of "it doesn't really matter what you do".

petesergeant 4y ago

It's 8 minutes, not one minute The people in the study were out of shape to start with The improved measures were insulin sensitivity index, peak oxygen uptake, and "skeletal muscle mitochondrial content" No change in body mass In conclusion, if you're out of shape, you can improve a limited number of fitness measures just as much doing 3x8 minutes of higher intensity exercise as much 3×45m less intense exercise over 12 weeks

newaccount74 4y ago
I think it was 10 minutes in total: 2min warmup 20sec max effort 2min recovery 20sec max effort 2min recovery 20sec max effort 3min cooldown
- petesergeant 4y ago
  You’re right, I can’t count
oxfordmale 4y ago
Exercise doesn't result in changes in body mass (weight loss), unless accompanied with a diet. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/28/study-reveals-that-exercise-alone-wont-cause-weight-loss#:~:text=Exercise%20alone%20is%20not%20enough,extra%20calories%2C%20researchers%20have%20found https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/28/study-reveal....
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Yes it can. I had an injury that prevented me from cycling for over a year and slowly gained weight. It all came off after resuming a normal routine without dietary changes.
  - epolanski 4y ago
    Well whether you lose/gain weight depends on (caloriesIn - caloriesOut) it's no rocket science. If you didn't compensate anymore as much for lowering the calories out you're obviously going to gain weight.

chkgk 4y ago

The study apparently only involved male participants. The control group consists of 6, the two treatment groups of 10 and 9 participants. The total N of the study is 25 participants. They conduct a one-way ANOVA on the interaction of time and treatment group indicators. I conclude that the study is woefully underpowered. I do not trust the apparent significance of their results.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
Every time I see a study with a big headline, it almost always has double digit participants. Very callous behavior.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  First studies with new findings should be small, surely, so we can weed out effects to test with larger studies. The question is whether the larger studies are being done? The incentives are such that democratic governments need to be leading the research, IMO. How do we ensure at a national level (because studies probably need to be repeated in different nations) we're doing good science, backing up key results, informing the population what the better ways of behaving are?
danieka 4y ago
I really don't understand statistics. My interpretation of "the study is under-powered" is that since the study has so small groups it will be difficult to find any result that is statistically significant. But wouldn't that mean that for any effect to be significant the effect size would have to be huge? My hunch is that if you have a large enough group even very small effect sizes will be significant, but in small groups only the very largest effect sizes will be significant. Or am I simply bad at statistics?
- sandgiant 4y ago
  There might be someone able to better explain this, but one way it could work wold be to say that for small samples any bad assumptions you make (such as variables or measurements being independent) will affect the result more than if you had a larger sample. The assumption I make to make this work is that dependencies are more likely to be drowned out by internal variation in a larger sample. So you get to pick which assumption you like better.

xarope 4y ago

As others below have pointed out, the study specifically targets certain markers, and these markers do not encompass "fitness" as we would expect. I learnt the lesson a long time ago that you need to train long and low as well as short and hard, so I'd like to repost this article from Mark Twight (if anybody has a better - or more original, link, please feel free to post it): https://equipesolitaire.com/blogs/discourse/85824260-no-free-lunch https://equipesolitaire.com/blogs/discourse/85824260-no-free...

Fricken 4y ago
The article is directed towards elite, competitive athletes who are already in shape and have a training history. At that level, yes, of course there is more to it than a few short sprint sessions each week. For about 15 years I've been relying on HIIT to go from being out of shape to in shape as quickly as I know how. Going from in shape to top fitness, and progressing from there is more involved, and sport specific.
- moneywoes 4y ago
  What was your protocol?
  - Fricken 4y ago
    Last few times I've done it was sprinting on stairs. Typically I'll do a 10 minute warm-up, and then 3-8 sprints, 20-40 seconds each, with ~3 minute rests in between. However I'm not super particular about protocols. I just go out, redline my heart rate a few times and call it a session. Last summer I was sprinting stairs every 3 days for a month to prepare for a week of multi-pitch climbing (with huge approaches) in the Canadian Rockies. I whipped myself into pretty good condition for the trip and my body held up, but it wasn't until after that week of climbing mountains every day that I felt like I was in properly awesome condition.
    - xarope 4y ago
      Please excuse the bluntness, but I find it hard to believe that you only trained sprints every 3 days (so 2-3 times a week max) to train for huge approaches and multi-pitch climbing (I'm a trad climber and mountaineer too). I assume this was not done in a vacuum, but also included numerous days of climbing and approaches as well, so probably 3/week of climbing, other low intensity work, as well as your then added 2-3/week of sprints. And yes, I agree with your last statement, after 3 weeks in the mountains acclimating for a 7000m peak, even though we got snowed out and never summited, when I got back to ground zero I felt like my lungs and legs were invincible (for about a week, then the bottom dropped out and I went back to normal again!)

jonplackett 4y ago

All these many studies about 1 minute exercise don’t seem to take into account how long that fitness will last, and how likely you are to get injured. I started running about a year ago and the first thing you have to learn is there’s a bunch of body systems you need to improve - heart, ability to use oxygen, removal of lactic acid, strengthening your body so you don’t get injured and can therefore train continuously. Probably others. And they all are best adapted by training at different speeds and intensities. So you do some fast stuff and some _really_ slow stuff and some in the middle stuff. High intensity is definitely great exercise. It definitely does something that slow stuff doesn’t. But it doesn’t mean you should _only_ do high intensity.

rintakumpu 4y ago
As a former national-level 10km runner I can very much second this training regimen. However if your starting point is sedentary you are probably better off doing something that you like and can commit to, be it high-intensity or otherwise. Studies like these are important in showing various tradeoffs but shouldn't be used blindly and prescriptively.
- jonplackett 4y ago
  Hey - congrats on national level 10k! Very impressive! When you say ‘this’ training regimen, do you mean the fast/slow/in between i described, or the one they talk about in the article? If the article then I’m gonna give it a try anyway!
grogenaut 4y ago
Agreed. Getting back into shape or higher shape is often focusing on the part of your body current letting you down. A simple loop is you sprint, your legs gas out... Squats or other exercise. Legs strong now, you can't breath hard enough... More core... Now your core is stronger than your legs are. Legs again. Then consider stabilizers (I'm currently unable to squat more till I strengthen those).. etc etc. As I get older I'm learning more and more about stabilizers and tendons don't strengthen as fast as they used to.

Aldipower 4y ago

Ok, guys go ahead and do it this way. I stick with my marathon training plan, "which just works"™. Of course, there are also high-intensity workouts included, but the foundation is based on "easy runs" and sightseeing with the bike. There are just no short-cuts. I call the title of the post BS.

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throwaway4good 4y ago

Is it not a bit of a scientific straw man? Most exercise classes, aerobics, CrossFit, whatever, contains bursts of high intensity exercise?

Tade0 4y ago

I've been doing something like this lately, only accidentally. The distance between my apartment and daycare is 1300m and there are three road/street crossings on my way, so especially on one 240m stretch of wide pavement I can go as fast as possible without endangering my toddler. I average no less than 6km/h on this route. I'm as sedentary as they get and indeed I'm seeing some improvements. That being said this wasn't the only recent lifestyle change, so it might well not be a significant component.

psychphysic 4y ago

Research is important for research sake. But can anyone explain why these studies are like cat nip to the public and tabloids? "Any and All exercise is worthwhile (up to a limit)" and "unhealthy food bad for you" Over and over and over again...

oblio 4y ago
Because a huge percentage of the populations (yours truly included) lives unhealthy lifestyles and they want an easy way out or they have aspirational goals (think New Year's resolutions) they will never reach and do like being reminded of them occasionally. And tabloids frequently get to use cute/sexy pics for these articles, so more clicks.
HPsquared 4y ago
There is a big demand for column inches.

rax0m 4y ago

What about bone strength though?

notyourday 4y ago

That's just another out of context study jumped on by people who absolutely positively want to find a way to justify sitting on their ass, eating excessive amount of ultra processed carbohydrates and moving as little as possible Huberman currently is doing a series on fitness with Galpin. I highly recommend listening/watching it to get the context. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEYE-vcVKy8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEYE-vcVKy8 TL;DR: there are different kinds of fitness and to be in a reasonable health over the long term one needs to have all of them.

brodouevencode 4y ago
Just came here to plug this - a lot of material, A LOT of material, and the latest one released today is nearly 5 hours. But if you are at all interested in this kind of stuff it's very much worth the listen.

bcd3169 4y ago

N = 27

arthurofbabylon 4y ago

In personal experience as a dedicated rock climber (traveling full time for half of the last 15 years), I can easily conclude that bursts of intense exercise accomplish a lot more for health and fitness than prolonged, more gentle workouts. Intensity readily builds muscle mass and coordinates muscle fibers, while fostering feelings of clarity and joy. It’s just the easier pathway to “being fit.” Climbers train for intensity. One can easily convert high-intensity fitness to low-intensity but prolonged fitness. The other direction does not happen. High-intensity and short-burst fitness is more malleable, capable of becoming any type of fitness. Ie, a climber with bouldering fitness transitioning to sport climbing will take just 2-3 weeks to attain good results, while a sport climber transitioning to bouldering will take at least two months. Boulderers and sport climbers can instantly perform on multi-pitch routes, without a transitional period. The intensity gradient from intense/short to gentle/prolonged is bouldering -> sport climbing -> multi-pitch. However, I have never been at peak climbing fitness without daily walks. The assumption I have always held is that walking resolves problems (much like what sleep accomplishes for tissues, immune responses, emotions, memory, and cognition). You’re walking, blood is flowing, the whole body is coordinated, you’re breathing through your nose, you can think… it’s integrative. Humans are designed to walk.

nmca 4y ago
Isn't this just a different thing? Bouldering builds peak strength, not really intensity in the sense it's meant here? Max hangs do not translate to watts you can do for a minute on a bike, right?
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  Bouldering requires leg strength and max effort output over a minute timespan. Heel hooks, slab, arete, bat hangs are all going to tax your lower body, and a good boulderer can put themselves in hell for a limited timespan, as it’s required for many problems. Climbing is so much more than pull up and grip strength.
TheAlchemist 4y ago
This may work in climbing, but as far as I know, it doesn't really work in cycling or running. Yes, you should do a bit of high-intensity, but also ~80% of your training in those disciplines should be rather low intensity. Basically one does not work without the other.

happypants23 4y ago

People actually benefit from both low-intensity and high-intensity exercise. One is not a substitute for the other. Endurance athletes know this. Low-intensity exercise conditions aerobic energy pathways (mitochondrial respiration) in ways that high-intensity exercise cannot.

MezzoDelCammin 4y ago

personally, I'd be cautious of using this article to build up an exercise routine. Yes, intervals / HIIT are really effective and they consume relatively little time. Being an egineer it's tempting to use this as a base for some sort of 80-20 heuristics and simply say "this is good enough" and cut the aerobics. But is it? It's definitely better than doing nothing. But if the goal is some sort of performance improvement (specially in endurance sports - cycling, running, etc.), 9 times out of 10 I'd go with what's today called "polarized training". The basic idea of polarized training is "yes, intervals are definitely useful to push the body further, but only after a buttload of cardio". The routine then looks something like for every one very low intensity, very long duration session a week, there's one or two shorter all-out interval sessions. The intervals alone would lead to a plateau pretty quickly... Happy to provide references in follow-ups, if anyone is interested.

affgrff2 4y ago
Interestingly, the polarized training you describe is also know as the 80/20 rule that specifically recommend the opposite (80% low intensity + 20% high intensity) of what you mean by 80-20 (do just 20% to gain 80% of results).
- MezzoDelCammin 4y ago
  ah, misunderstanding. What I meant is the somewhat natural tendency to see the 80% gains in 20% effort and then say "80%, that's good enough".
balfirevic 4y ago
> But if the goal is some sort of performance improvement (specially in endurance sports - cycling, running, etc.) It probably isn't, for most non-athletes and people who don't have a sport hobby. > yes, intervals are definitely useful to push the body further, but only after a buttload of cardio I definitely won't be doing "a buttload of cardio", so we're back to square one - what is a good 80:20 heuristics that balances time investment, discomfort and results.

robochat42 4y ago

Doesn't high intensity exercise have a greater risk of injury ? For instance, they did sprint intervals here, I think that I might need a 15 minute run just to warm up my knees enough to do the sprints (getting older sucks).

balfirevic 4y ago
> they did sprint intervals here Cycling sprints, on exercise bike.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago

1 second of super high intensity exercise 3x a week improves fitness as much as 59x aerobics

mateusfreira 4y ago

Devs next week: 0. git commit 1. git push 2. open an MR 3. powerlifting while the CI is running .... Business idea: powerlifting bars to homeoffices

Kuytu 4y ago
https://nordicrackandoffice.fi/en/ https://nordicrackandoffice.fi/en/
- mateusfreira 4y ago
  OMG it already exists, thanks for sharing

adave 4y ago

There are low intensity but high impact moves as level called compound moves that work as well. Focus on 10+mins in VO2 max on your tracker and go from there.

amelius 4y ago

I have one question: why did it take humans so long to figure this out?

GuB-42 4y ago
I guess "exercising" is a relatively new thing in human history. Normally, calories are something you want to save, not something you want to lose. People worked out by doing actual work, training or playing. If you think about it, the idea sounds completely ridiculous. Doing a minute of painful of physical activity with no practical use because you are too busy not moving. If you go back in time with this idea people will probably ask you what crime you committed to deserve such punishment. For it to make sense, you need an unnatural combination of abundant food, sedentary work and little free time, which only recently became a thing for commoners.

deleted 4y ago

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twawaaay 4y ago

Everybody knows that high intensity exercise does more than low intensity ones per hour invested. At least in running world. The issues are, and especially when you are out of shape: * adherence -- it is difficult to keep people do hard, high intensity exercises regularly. Part of being a runner is learning to deal with pain but people who are out of shape are almost by definition new to this and are not yet accustomed to pain. * injuries -- especially when you are out of shape, the goal should be consistency over quality. Any injuries will immediately put you out of your high intensity training. And high intensity training with out of shape people is a recipe for lots of injuries. * volume -- while you can do a lot more per minute on high intensity exercise, you can do a lot more low intensity volume. You can quickly and safely build up to be able to do half an hour of slow jog a day even if you are overweight and out of shape. * recovery -- high intensity exercises have high recovery requirements. Do out of shape subjects know how to massage their muscles? How to stretch? How long to recover? Recovery will further cut the volume of training. An out of shape person may need 3-4 days of recovery after a short but hard, intense interval session. Normally, this is filled with low intensity running and intense sessions are limited to once a week to give time to recover. Even elite runners recognise how dangerous it is to do large volume of high intensity exercises and there is very popular, successful movement now to almost exclusively low intensity exercises and reserving high intensity mostly for the last stretch before the event. The main goal of this is to ensure injury-free training. So if I was taking care for out of shape patients and prescribing training regimen I would still tell them to do, for starters, easy, comfortable jogging rather than any high intensity exercise.

paulcole 4y ago
> Everybody knows that high intensity exercise does more than low intensity ones per hour invested. At least in running world. “Does more” is hella vague. As a 40-mile a week runner I find that low intensity runs “do more” for me because they’re more relaxing.
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- infamousclyde 4y ago

chewbacha 4y ago

Only 25 men were used? How can we possibly extrapolate that to others??

roxgib 4y ago

n=10. n=6 for the control group. I stopped reading at that point.

mkl95 4y ago

I went from virtually no exercise to moderate exercise for 15min, 4 to 6 times a week. Mostly 2 to 3 minute rounds on a heavy punching bag. I wouldn't call it life changing from a physical point of view, at least not yet. But the mental benefits were there from the first month.

airbreather 4y ago

There is various science around from multiple sources that suggest that HIIT High Intensity Interval Training or SHIT Super High Intensity Training puts the body in a different mode for some time afterwards. When the heart is stimulated to between 80 and 95% capacity (depending on source of information) this then prompts physiological changes that last long past the exercise event. CSIRO in Australia has been researching this for many years and is the premium (though still slightly woeful) scientific body in Australia. Not many real hills where I live, but there is one nearby and you often see people sprinting up it (sometimes backwards) and walking down, multiple times. One good plain language summary (not from CSIRO) is: "The “LifeSprints” study by Boucher in 2011 suggests that in the lower intensity steady state cardio trials, not enough levels of epinephrine (adrenaline) were present to stimulate fat breakdown in the muscle cells. During and after higher intensity exercise epinephrine and norepinephrine floats around in the system which stimulates “hormone sensitive lipase” to start breaking down fat in the fat cells. Therefore, the presence of epinephrine could be considered a major lipoliptic factor in fat breakdown (Trapp, Chisholm & Boutcher, 2007). During higher intensity exercise reaching maximal levels, not only does the body switch to carbohydrate as a main source of energy, a by-product of the anaerobic system (as seen in maximal intensities) is lactic acid. Lactic acid is said to be a blocker of epinephrine."

jvm___ 4y ago

My best running times were in 2017 when I did a 7 minute workout for 90 days in a row. I was doing the routine twice by the end of the 90 days. The 7 minute workout was a fad in 2012? that promised the same results as this study. Minimal time effort, maximum results.

nottorp 4y ago

The real question is how do you get people to exercise something, anything, daily. Not what exactly they should do.

alz 4y ago

It looks like they made people do things that require more short term oxygen uptake and as a result they adapted to be able to uptake more oxygen in the short term. I wouldn't so readily dismiss the myriad of other physical adaptations that result from long term, high volume, low intensity exercise, such as improved bone density, better fat metabolism, stronger heart muscles, better endurance and resilience, better mental health and cognition etc.

ck2 4y ago

Sure okay on paper. Now show me the average 5K race time for each group. The 3x 45minute group would destroy the 8 minute sprint group. It's all in how you define "fitness"

jononomo 4y ago
Why are you so confident? See my other comment.
- ck2 4y ago
  The way you trained was almost exactly the same as the 3x 45 minute group. What you call a 45 second sprint at the end is similar to what trained runners do after a run called strides. It has no similarity to the sprint training group. You did not say how many weeks you trained. It was roughly 20 miles per week which yes is enough to do a half-marathon in 1:40 for an average 35 year old man which is considered the "open" category (though races also do age-groups) Had you increased to 40 miles per week you could have done a marathon in around 3:25 Running has been studied for so many decades by so many people that it's almost a science with very few surprises unless someone turns out to be exceptionally genetically gifted.
  - jononomo 4y ago
    Thanks for the informative comment!

jononomo 4y ago

Back in 2011, I went through a phase in which I ran on the treadmill for 21 minutes several times a week. I would jog at 8-9 MPH for 2:15, then sprint all-out for 45 seconds at 10.5 or 11 MPH. The only other exercises I did were some light-weight squats and a handful of oddball machine exercises. I was also on a paleo diet. After I had been doing this for a few months (not more than 4 months) a friend of mine invited me to take part in a half-marathon. Prior to the half marathon, I only went on two long runs with my friend (over ten miles). When the big day came I finished the race in 99 minutes -- which is a 7:30/mile pace for the entire race. I was 35 years old at the time. I was astounded at how well I performed given my training regimen -- I ended up near the top of my age class!

marmada 4y ago

Can someone confirm what intensity is high intensity? E.g, I have a rowing machine that leaves mildly out of breath and makes my heart beat quickly, is that HIIT? Or is HIIT more like stair climbers, which cause me to almost collapse after doing them for 12+ minutes.

finnh 4y ago
If you can do it for more than 1 minute, than it's not high intensity. Not to say it's not a good-great workout, but it's not the HI in HIIT. Also - hello fellow punishment lover! I rowed in high school & college & used to own an erg and am considering buying another one. They are so. fucking. time. efficient (HIIT evangelism be damned).
shlant 4y ago
from the study - "'all-out' cycle sprints (~500W)"

jrochkind1 4y ago

It says "Free PMC article", but I'm having trouble finding anywhere to click to see the whole article instead of just abstract and citations. Can anyone help me get it, whether that's me missing a place to click, or getting around paywall?

pfisherman 4y ago
Click on “full text links”. You could also click the doi link address.

curiousllama 4y ago

Having dabbled in a couple different exercise disciplines, I’d encourage very small updates to your priors from this study. Every bodybuilder knows that you have to push to failure and rest a lot between sets. The term for low-intensity or unrested lifting is “junk volume.” Every runner knows that 80% of your volume should be easy. It’s called “80/20 training.” Every CrossFit bro knows you need both intensity and volume - and maximizing that over time is what’s important. They all work, but in different ways + for different reasons. There’s lots of studies that try to break the mold. Usually, they’re limited by the impracticality of a large N, or perfect adherence, or exogenous factors, or avoiding hype. It’s a limitation of the field. It just means things will go slower. Don’t worry too much about any one study.

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wantsanagent 4y ago

Has anyone got an optimized home setup for this strategy? What equipment and/or monitors do you have and what specific exercises do you do? How to you incentivize your consistent adherence?

mokash 4y ago
i'd recommend a rowing machine. targets a lot of muscles, allows high/low intensity cardio, and is low impact to help reduce the probability of injury

kilgnad 4y ago

I've done this for a decade. It's real. I exercise a couple minutes doing all out sprints 3-4x a week and it increased my VO2 max faster then running 5 miles everyday. I've tried both. The increase in performance is dramatic. Like you can bring yourself to way above average VO2 max performance doing HIIT on the daily. I want to emphasize though that one thing I noticed is that this is exclusively for VO2 max. I'm not sure if this type of exercise is good for the long term. It's good for increasing your performance.

glomgril 4y ago

If you are out of shape, do one set of pushups once a day (however many feels comfortable even if you have to cheat a bit). Start small, even just a couple, and gradually increase the reps over time. You will be blown away by the results after even 2-3 months. Probably works best if you are scrawny to start with but I imagine any out of shape person would benefit. Given it takes less than 1min per day, everyone has time for something like this.

deterministic 4y ago

I highly recommend reading “Body by Science”. It shows how you can improve your overall muscle strength spending just 15 min in the gym once a week. Perfect for people like me who hate going to the gym. It’s simple. It works. I am 50+ and way stronger now than I was before.

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