Get Fit in Just a Few Minutes a Week
Is it possible to get and stay fit by exercising just a few minutes per week? Get-Fit Guy reports on groundbreaking new research on how you can improve your fitness and health with high intensity interval training. Plus, learn 2 different ways to get fit with HIIT.
Ben Greenfield
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Get Fit in Just a Few Minutes a Week
The fitness world has recently been taken by storm with the news that high intensity interval training sessions get you maximum fitness with minimum time..
But high intensity interval training isn’t exactly a complete newsflash. After all, two years ago, I published Get-Fit Guy Episode #56 How to Do High Intensity Interval Training, followed by Episode #130 the next year What’s the Minimum Amount of Exercise You Can Do? — both of which discuss the benefits of HIIT.
However, two recent studies have shed new light on high intensity interval training, renewing public interest in getting maximum results with minimal time. The Journal of Experimental Physiology published a study entitled “Intermittent and continuous high-intensity exercise induce similar acute but different chronic muscle training adaptations” and just a few weeks, the journal published another study called “Effect of 24 sessions of high-intensity aerobic interval training carried out at either high or moderate frequency, a randomized trial.”
In today’s episode, you’ll find out what makes this new research groundbreaking, and you’ll discover whether you can really get fit with just a few short bouts of high intensity exercise each week. Plus, we’ll learn 2 different ways to get fit with HIIT.
Should You Mix Up Your HIIT?
The first study I mentioned looked into whether you should mix up your interval training, or if it’s OK to just do the same type of interval training sessions each week.
In the study, researchers took one group of exercisers and had them complete 6 weeks of a high intensity interval training (HIIT) that consisted of four 30-second all-out cycling bouts, with four minutes of recovery between each 30-second effort. On a separate day, this same group completed one long effort of four minutes – an effort that burned the same number of calories as the stop-and-go session. In other words, this group mixed up the intensity and time length of their intervals. Then, after 6 weeks, the researchers measured improvements in athletic performance by having the exercisers ride as hard as possible for a specified period of time, and also measured blood and tissue samples.
Then the researchers measured the same type of fitness response, but this time, rather than using stop-and-go intervals mixed with steady continuous four-minute workouts, they only used the steady continuous four-minute workouts.
Although the researchers were careful to make sure that the four-minute workouts burned the same number of calories and expended the same energy as the stop-and-go workouts (meaning that both groups did the same amount of work), it turns out that mixing the stop-and-go efforts with the continuous efforts resulted in greater fitness gains and a slower loss of fitness compared with just doing the continuous efforts. The researchers summed this up by saying: “Despite similar acute signalling responses to the CONT (four minute) and INT (four minute mixed with stop-and-go) protocols, training with CONT did not increase the maximal activity or protein content of a range of mitochondrial markers.”
So what’s the takeaway message from this first study?
If you’re going to do HIIT training, you’ll get better results if you mix things up, and do different time lengths and intensities of HIIT.
For example, if you’re doing cardio workouts three times per week, you can do 4-8 short 30-second bursts on Day 1, 2-4 longer 4-minute continuous sessions on Day 2, and perhaps one long 10-20 minute effort on Day 3.
How Many HIIT Sessions Can You Do Per Week?
In the second study, published in PLOS One by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, researchers had a group of exercisers perform a total of 24 HIIT workouts over either 3 or 8 weeks. This means that some of the exercisers worked out 3 times per week, but the other group worked out almost every day (and sometimes twice on the same day).
What were their results?
At the end of their weeks’ assignment, the group who did 3 HIIT sessions per week improved their endurance capacity by about 11%. But the group that exercised daily or multiple times per day actually did not improve, and in many cases experienced a decline in fitness. Eventually, the group that exercised more frequently did indeed see an improvement in aerobic capacity, but only after nearly 2 weeks of rest – suggesting that the frequent and exhausting protocol dug them into an overtraining hole that only rest and recovery could bring them out of.
So what’s the takeaway from this study?
You can get fitness results in one of two ways:
A) by consistently doing HIIT sessions just a few times a week.
B) by working yourself out to complete exhaustion with multiple frequent hard training sessions, then completely recovering with almost no training at all.
I don’t know about you, but that former scenario seems far more healthy and sustainable than the latter scenario – and less likely to get you injured, sick, or make you feel just plain miserable!
And by the way, for reasons I outline in my article Look, Feel and Perform Like An Ancient Spartan Warrior – How To Become An Absolute Physical Beast, I still include not just HIIT, but also occasional stamina-building endurance training sessions. I don’t do these long sessions because they’re superior for building fitness. I do them because I have personally chosen to participate in competitive events such as Ironman triathlon, adventure racing, and Spartan racing – all of which require longer periods of time spent on your feet, and the mental and physical tolerance to exercise that can only be built by occasionally spending long periods of time moving.
If you have questions about whether you can really get fit in just a few minutes a week, then leave your questions and join the discussion over at Facebook.com/GetFitGuy.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.