NY Times – Gretchen Reynolds May 9, 2013
Hey All….I Double Dip Dare you to try this 7 minute workout right now!
Exercise science is a fine and intellectually fascinating thing. But sometimes you just want someone to lay out guidelines for how to put the newest fitness research into practice.
An article in the May-June issue of the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal does just that. In 12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest mandates for high-intensity effort, which essentially combines a long run and a visit to the weight room into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based on science.
“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article.
The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re done.
Exercise science is a fine and intellectually fascinating thing. But sometimes you just want someone to lay out guidelines for how to put the newest fitness research into practice.
Denise’s
2 Cents:
When you think about it, we all move every second of every day. Even when we sleep, our breathing in and out has us moving our chest muscles.
So the question that comes up is: if we all move, all the time, then what is exercise?
Does using a gym membership, or playing a sport, or running a race become the only way to exercise?
Really what you need is to push your body sometimes. In order to slow down the aging process, it’s important to regularly move in such a way that you breathe heavily and are aware of your effort—how hard you are exerting yourself. So, since we don’t chase mountain lions to get our food anymore, here is an effective regimen from the New York Times for getting some hard exercise in a short amount of time: The Scientific 7-minute workout.
And science is proving that less is more. Yahoo.
Denise Gaylord
Personal Trainer & Challenge Coach
Provincetown USA