One Minute of Pain and Your Workout is Done…Almost

Happy Holidays and Here’s a Present for Nerds, Couch Potatoes, and Steemit Addicts Everywhere! You no longer have to work out for 30, 45, or 60 minutes. Just ONE minute of hard exercise is enough!*

*Of course there’s a catch. There’s always a catch. But this one won’t take more than 10 minutes; I promise you.

As many of us settle into our cold Northern Hemisphere winters with these short days, it’s important to remember to exercise. If you’re like me, you eat too much holiday food and sweets, and then you’re too lazy to get up and work off those calories. I’d rather sit and watch football games, basketball games, and crazy uncles spinning those wild “back in my day” yarns.

THIS JUST IN! Couch potatoes, here is some great news that came out a few months ago and continues to gain confirmation. You do NOT need to bust your ass for 45 minutes to get a full workout.

You can get your full workout in just ONE MINUTE of wickedly grueling exercise.

Is that all? Not quite. It actually takes 10 minutes of overall exercise. But you only bust it hard for one minute. That’s it. 60 seconds of vigorous exercise.

Researchers at Canada’s McMaster University have been researching interval training and have published several results of their findings before. This time, they conducted a published study which tested the effectiveness of short, intensive workouts versus traditional 45-minute workouts. These scientists started with a group of men from the same age group who did not exercise. They divided these couch potatoes into three smaller groups.

• Group 1 exercised normally for 45 minutes.

• Group 2 used interval training for only 10 minutes total (a 2-minute warm up, 20 seconds of hard exercise, slower again, 20 more hard seconds, slower again, and 20 more hard seconds followed by a cool down).

• Group 3 was the control group who continued to sit on their butts on the sofa.

And what did the researchers find? After three months of a controlled regimen, both Group 1 and Group 2 had identical results (with no changes for the control group). The effects on aerobic fitness, blood pressure, insulin, substances that create mitochondria activity in the cells are came back the same for both groups.

That means just one minute of hard exercise, spaced out through short intervals in a 10 minute span, is equal to 45 minutes of strong exercise. This is known as high intensity interval training (HIIT).

And by the way, this study used men, but the researchers will run a similar study soon with women also. It’s unlikely that the results would be hugely different.

TODAY’s Shienelle Jones tried the “one-minute” workout for three weeks, using a workout suggested by the lead researcher of the McMaster study. It worked well for her. Jones successfully met her goal, which was to increase her aerobic capacity by a certain amount.

Happy Holidays. This is great news for those of us who can get back to the sofa much sooner. While I am not encouraging a sedentary lifestyle, it is nice to know that we can get some measurable benefits from less physical torture.