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One of the main complaints about exercise is that it requires a huge investment of time, with hours of hard work and sweat required to see a health reward.
But what if only a few seconds of motion repeated multiple times in a row could get you there?
People who sat for eight hours but interrupted their inactivity with four seconds of full-speed racing on a special stationary bike every hour, 160 seconds of total exercise per day, burned more fat and had lower triglyceride levels the next day. compared to people who were still sitting
The results of the small study were recently published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
Triglycerides are a type of fat in the blood. Eating too many fatty foods or consuming more calories than the body needs can lead to high triglyceride levels, which can increase the risk of heart disease.
Previous studies showed that just one exercise session, like running for an hour, could improve triglyceride levels the next day, but this experiment showed that the same benefit occurred with just 160 seconds of exercise, said Edward Coyle, professor of kinesiology and health education at the University of Texas at Austin.
“Exercise improves health. Generally, what you do today improves your health tomorrow, “Coyle, who is also the director of the school’s Human Performance Laboratory, told TODAY.
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“So when you do a very intense exercise like this, even though it is not a lot of exercise, it is still a stimulation for the muscle … it improves the muscles’ ability to extract triglycerides from the bloodstream, burning them directly, increasing fat oxidation. “
For the study, the researchers asked four men and four women, all healthy and in their 20s, to sit for eight hours, getting up just to get food or use the bathroom. To check how their bodies responded to a high-fat meal the next day, the volunteers’ blood was drawn after drinking a melted ice cream shake and whipped cream the next morning.
They then sat for eight hours on a separate day, but performed brief periods of intense exercise: a four-second sprint, followed by 45 seconds of rest, repeated five times, every hour. It was 160 seconds of exercise throughout the day.
Once again, the participants returned the next morning to drink the decadent smoothie and draw their blood. This time, they had a much better metabolic response. Their triglycerides were 31% lower after the high-fat meal, compared to the morning after the sedentary day. They also burned more fat for the next six hours.
Taking short breaks from sitting activity, even if it’s just for a minute, can provide health benefits if done regularly, said Keith Diaz, an assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who also studies the health hazards. much sitting
Diaz, who was not involved in this study, called these short breaks “exercise snacks.” Muscles are important in controlling blood sugar and triglyceride levels, so when people don’t move, this process doesn’t work as effectively. The really intense exercise that uses almost all the muscle fibers will counteract this, he said, noting that it was particularly surprising how brief the training in this experiment was.
“This could be good news for sedentary adults who have limited time in their day and may not be able to go to the gym. Of course, the caveat is that the exercise was a total effort, “Díaz said.
The sprints were performed on a special type of stationary bicycle called an inertial load ergometer.
The bike, with its large, heavy steering wheel, allows cyclists to go from zero revolutions per minute to about 160 RPM in four seconds, requiring them to go slow and hard first, then fast with less drag, Coyle said. This involves fast-twitch muscle fibers, which are activated when people move with great force.
The ergometer is different from a standard stationary bike in that typical in-house equipment allows riders to accelerate too quickly and recruits fewer muscle fibers, he noted. Coyle owns capital in a company that sells the inertial load ergometer used in this study, but said it did not influence the results.
How to do the 4-second workout in real life:
In other studies, people who did the training very briefly three times a week not only had a better metabolic response, but they improved their cardiovascular system and got stronger, Coyle said.
But he noted that it is difficult to replicate the intensity of the special bike at home. The closest thing would be to do 40-yard sprints on a track or climb a hill, but it’s easy to pull a muscle like that, he said.
Climbing a flight of stairs as quickly as possible would be another option, but there is a chance that a person will skip a ladder or slip and get hurt. The jumps wouldn’t involve enough muscle, but anything is better than nothing, Coyle said.
“The challenge for those with sedentary jobs will be figuring out how and where they could incorporate full sprints,” said Díaz. “I am sure that many workers might find it socially unacceptable to run through the hallways of the office.”
The next step may be to find more practical ways to compensate for the harm of sitting in the workplace, he noted.
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