I like to say that we should train smart and not just hard. Mostly what I mean is that we can become fit in less time, if we go about it in the most efficient ways. Conventional wisdom was that you needed to simply work out for long hours to reach the heights many people desire in fitness or athletic performance, but there has been quite a bit of research over the last decade (even longer) that revealed the unexpected. Namely, that depending on one’s fitness and performance goals, we may be able to realize gains more quickly through shorter-duration, higher-intensity workouts, thereby spending less time and seeing greater rates of progress toward our goals.
For example, in an article published in The Journal of Physiology (full text: Gibala et al. 2006), the results suggest that high-intensity (anaerobic) interval training may be as effective as long periods of moderate-intensity (aerobic) for improving exercise performance and resistance to muscle fatigue. Study participants ran either 4-6 high-intensity 30 second sprint intervals on an exercise bicycle with 4 minutes rest between (2.5 hours over 2 weeks), or 90 minute continuous moderate-intensity cycling (10.5 hours over 2 week), but showed similar improvements in performance measured before and after the 2 week study period. With that kind of result, the authors suggest rightfully that ‘lack of time’ may not be a very good excuse for neglecting one’s physical fitness. read more…
Title: Training smart: a few sprints can do much good in the long run
Technorati Tags: exercise, fitness, interval-training, research, training
