The most common answer I get from people when I ask why they don’t exercise is, “I just don’t have the time.” That is not strictly true. According to recent research, you might not need nearly as much time as you think you do to get in a beneficial workout.
In a study, 27 men who were considered sedentary were divided into three groups. One group did 50 minutes of moderate exercise three times a week. Another group did 10 minutes of high-intensity exercise in the form of sprint interval training (SIT). The third group just kept being sedentary. The 10-minute SIT workout included a 2-minute warm-up and a 3-minute cool-down.
Here’s how the short routine, which was done by way of cycling, looked:
Warm-up: 2 minutes
Sprint: 20 seconds
Low-to-moderate effort cycling: 2 minutes
Sprint: 20 seconds
Low-to-moderate effort cycling: 2 minutes
Sprint: 20 seconds
Low-to-moderate effort cycling: 2 minutes
Cool-down: 2-3 minutes
For those of you counting, that’s 10 minutes of total work, and just 1 minute—seriously of sprinting, done three times a week. That couldn’t be enough to elicit any kind of serious response, right?
Well, after 12 weeks, the researchers found that the results of a number of key health measurements were virtually the same for the people who did either the long bouts of moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) or the SIT, even though the men doing SIT had a five-fold lower exercise volume and time commitment. Researchers measured for insulin sensitivity, cardiorespiratory fitness and skeletal muscle strength.
On its website, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends that adults should do at least 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise or 75 minutes a week of vigorous exercise and the vigorous exercises should be done for at least 10 minutes at a time. But when matched up against men doing 150 minutes of MICT, the group doing SIT needed only 30 minutes a week and only 3 total minutes per week of high-intensity exercise to get the same effect.
The study also cited recent research that found people get more enjoyment from doing high-intensity workouts than from doing moderate-intensity ones and are more likely to continue doing the exercise over a four-week period.
Choosing to do moderate or intense exercise depends on a number of factors including your goals. But if you want to save more time each week, fit your cardio into shorter time periods, or just don’t like cardio and want to get it over with as quickly as possible, consider focusing on very short bursts of high-intensity workouts. You may just end up enjoying it more.
