Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Does a 7-Minute Workout Work?


If you talk to many fitness professionals they may tell you that you need to combine high intensity cardiovascular activity and resistance weight training.  What if we were to say that you can get a high intensity workout that fulfils these needs in only 7 minutes? A recent scientific article in the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal gives us evidence that you can!

In this article scientists were able to show that “a few minutes of training at an intensity approaching your maximum capacity produces molecular changes within muscles comparable to those of several hours of running or bike riding” at submaximal effort.   The exercises should be done in intervals. This recovery period between large muscles groups of the upper and lower body should be a maximum of 10 seconds.  The nice thing about alternating between the upper and lower body is that during an exercise, the unexercised muscles have a moment to recover, which can make the order that you perform the exercises very important. 

“The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each [with a 10-second rest between exercises], while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, [director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute] Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re done.”


Ref and Img: http://lifehacker.com/this-7-minute-research-based-workout-exercises-your-wh-498676327?utm_source=feedly

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