There are few quick fixes when it comes to fitness and health. If you are struggling to complete the 30 minutes recommended of exercise per day, then micro workouts could be the answer to improving your fitness.
Everyone knows that vigorous exercise is beneficial to our health. High-intensity exercises are hard to maintain for long periods, so they’re often performed in short bursts with short rest periods. It’s called high-intensity interval training (HIT) and can be done using a treadmill, bike, or group training sessions.
There are endless variations of HIT, depending on the length, intensity, number of repetitions, and duration of the recovery period. A common example would be to do eight to ten 1-minute bouts of cycling at a level close to your maximum aerobic capacity. A minute’s rest follows each repetition.
How does HIT compare to traditional workouts, then? And for how long should these sessions be?
Exercises that are high-intensity or continuous
All exercise programs are designed to improve cardiovascular fitness, including blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
Image from shutterstock.com. There are many possible variations of HIT, depending on the intensity, duration num, number of repetitions, and duration of the recovery period. Image taken from shutterstock.com
The majority of studies have shown that HIT when performed for between 2 and 12 weeks, can provide significant health and fitness benefits to people who are new to exercise.
HIT is a proven way to reduce bad cholesterol, blood pressure, and insulin resistance in people who are at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and stroke and those who have never exercised before.
All of these improvements were achieved with a shorter time commitment than the guidelines for exercise.
There is no evidence to suggest that HIT (involving short intervals up to a minute long) has a greater impact on health than continuous, regular forms of exercise.
Intermittent exercise allows for more efficient exercise sessions in a shorter period than continuous exercise. Brief recovery periods enable people to exercise with a higher intensity for a longer period, which leads to a greater stimulus for adaptation.
Is HIT the fastest way to health?
These results have changed the way exercise physiologists think about determining how much exercise and at what intensity is required to achieve measurable health benefits.
In Europe recently compared two HIT variations. Four four-minute bouts with three-minute recovery versus one four-minute effort 90% of maximum heart rate. These regimes were performed twice weekly for ten weeks by participants at risk of stroke, diabetes, and heart disease.
What was the result? Both groups showed similar improvements in aerobic fitness and blood pressure, as well as insulin resistance.
Image from shutterstock.com. There is no evidence to suggest that HIT has greater health benefits than regular and continuous forms of exercise. Image from shutterstock.com
Researchers have also tried shorter sessions with positive results. Just two 10-second or 20-second “all out” efforts, performed three times a week, also seem to promote changes in insulin resistance and aerobic fitness while saving time.
There is a risk of too little interval training. This was highlighted by an Australian group that found that a HIT of 8 to 12 “all-out” ten-second efforts three times a day for two weeks wasn’t enough to improve aerobic fitness.
The jury is still out as to what the minimum duration of HIT and the maximum intensity should be in order to reap health benefits.
What is the HIT weight loss method?
Evidence is unclear as to whether HIT can be a more effective way for overweight or obese people to lose weight. The studies that have attempted to answer this question either had too few participants or used insensitive body weight measures to detect meaningful change.
However, there is some evidence that HIT can reduce waist circumferences. This could indicate a reduction in abdominal fat.
Important to note is that a holistic approach is needed for meaningful weight loss. This involves combining a reduced-caloric diet with an exercise plan that may include HIT.
What are the risks and disadvantages of HIT?
As the name suggests, high-intensity training is a hard workout. Even the most experienced fitness enthusiasts can overdo it.
You should consider the risks of vigorous exercise if you have previously been inactive or if you were advised to do so due to chronic health problems such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.
