Less is More?

Unless you are training for a marathon, and yes we have been there and will be again, forget about those long workouts.  More and more research, including a study reported in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, is supporting that the most efficient, time-saving and health-benefiting way to exercise is to do interval training or intense bursts of activity.

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a form of training that incorporates cycles of intense bursts followed by rest or low intensity for recovery.  HIIT has been used for many years by athletes but it isn't until more recently that scientists have recognized the health benefits of HIIT in the general population.  Jamie Timmons, professor of systems biology at Loughborough University, has spent many years researching the health benefits of HIIT training in normal people.  He has shown that as little as three minutes of HIIT a week can improve the body's ability to cope with sugar surges, which is your metabolic fitness, as well as how efficiently your heart and lungs transport oxygen in your body, or your aerobic fitness.  Both of these measures are important predictors of future health.

The really exciting part of the study is how little HIIT is necessary to reap the benefits.  Just three sessions per week for four weeks (12 minutes of exercise) is enough to make a difference.  In addition to improvements in metabolic and aerobic fitness, HIIT can also result in more powerful muscles and less abdominal fat. 

So what does this mean to you as a Metabolic Warrior?  Good News!  Metabolic training goes one step beyond HIIT when done properly.  Metabolic Training is Rest Based Training.  This means that instead of working on a set interval where you may have the tendency to pace yourself to get through the interval, you "go until you can't, and rest until you can".  Remember how we tell you not to pace yourselves, to push hard until you have to rest?  The above mentioned benefits are why we tell you to give 100% and then rest when you need to.  And your rest is relative.  It can be 2 seconds, or 20 seconds, or longer. You rest until you are ready to go again. 

Are we suggesting that you exercise only a few minutes per week?  Definitely not!  There are many other gains to be made through daily exercise.  But once again, we recommend finding that balance between spending endless hours working out or doing nothing at all.  Of course we believe that the perfect balance can be achieved through Metabolic Training twice per week and balancing that with a lower intensity activity that you enjoy such as walking, biking, hiking, etc. on other days.