Can three minutes of exercise a week help make you fit?

[cd365]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

No more long rides for me

 

[tyred]

You mean I wasted almost 3.5 hours of my Sunday morning doing a 52 mile ride when riding to the end of the driveway and back would have sufficed

 

[swampyseifer]

hate stories like this...how many people now are going to claim they dont need to bother to be healthy because "their genes are no good"!

 

[colly]

Of course 3 mins a week can help you get you fit.


In much the same way that 3 swimming strokes will help you swim the channel.

It won't get you there but ...........

 

[Maz]

Of course 3 mins a week can help you get you fit.


In much the same way that 3 swimming strokes will help you swim the channel.

It won't get you there but ...........

My thoughts exactly!

 

[Davidc]

3 minutes on an exercise bike = total boredom.

A real bike out on the road for any length of time = total enjoyment.

No need for further comment on that.

 

[Arch]

Of course 3 mins a week can help you get you fit.


In much the same way that 3 swimming strokes will help you swim the channel.

It won't get you there but ...........

Having heard Micheal Mosley on Radio 4 at the weekend, talking about it, he did point out that you also have to have a moderately active lifestyle too. You can't spend the other 6 days 23 hours and 57 minutes sitting in a chair eating pizza and then expect 3 mins of intense exercise to work... And it has to be this High Intensity stuff, not just jogging to the gate and back...

 

[fossyant]

Blimey, I must be using my quota of Heart Beats up very quickly. HIT training every day, each way to and from work. I have a mate that strongly believes your heart only has a set number of beats - I'm well on my way out ! This should be interesting tonight - more like me screaming at the telly.

 

[totallyfixed]

No

 

[Moodyman]

In that case, nobody needs to exercise outside the bedroom.

 

[Francesca]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

FFS!..what a complete load of shite!! stay on your bikes guys and gals - take no notice of these brainwashing b******ds!
never heard such utter nonsense in all my life.

 

[ColinJ]

I think we all want to go out on our bikes and enjoy the great outdoors, but I think this research might be important. If people's health genuinely can be improved dramatically by a few minutes exercise a week, then that shoots down the "I'm too busy to exercise" excuse that so many unfit people use. With luck, people will give HIIT a go, feel the benefits, and want to do more, much more.

2010 was a bad year for me. My mum was terminally ill so there was a lot of worry, and I spent months down in Coventry when I would otherwise have been in Yorkshire riding my bike. In the end, I only rode 900 miles all year, but what I did do was to power-walk from Hebden Bridge up to the hilltop village of Heptonstall about 3 times a week. It is a steep 1 km walk ascending about 155 m, so it has an average gradient of 15.5%. I was doing it in 13 minutes a time. Okay, it wasn't the full-on intervals that this research is talking about, but I was walking up that hill as fast as I could given that I was about 3 stone overweight.

So, the bulk of my exercise that year was 39 minutes of intensive hill walking a week (plus about 2 hours of gentle walking and about 18 miles of slow, hilly cycling). I was amazed that my fitness improved significantly through the year.

For the next couple of months, I'm going to try and get a decent ride and a long walk in every weekend, plus maybe one extra road or MTB ride mid-week, but I'm also going to give HIIT a go a couple of times a week and see what it does for me.

 

[ColinJ]

Before anybody comes back to me ...

The obvious dangers of this are that:

• Someone who is desperately unfit and/or unhealthy will just jump on a gym bike, bust a gut doing their intervals and have a heart attack!
• Do those few minutes of exercise a few times week and think that they need do nothing else the rest of the time and that they can eat what they like!

 

[Edwards80]

It's the high intensity guzzling of McDonalds in 3mins that causes the problem so this is the obvious solution.

 

[marinyork]

Before anybody comes back to me ...

The obvious dangers of this are that:

• Someone who is desperately unfit and/or unhealthy will just jump on a gym bike, bust a gut doing their intervals and have a heart attack!
• Do those few minutes of exercise a few times week and think that they need do nothing else the rest of the time and that they can eat what they like!

Pretty much, and as the olympics are about to come up, we'll have a lot of this sort of effect happening. But despite all that I'm very supportive of this idea which is to package exercise as something doable for people.