I came across this article in the NY Times this morning. At 55, close to 56, I am trying to stay as healthy as possible, eating well, taking my daily 2-3 mile walk/hike. I admit to not getting adequate full body exercise. This article provides all I need to stop making excuses!
The Scientific 7 Minute Workout , from NY Times Health page, May 9, 2013
Exercise science is a fine and intellectually fascinating thing. But
sometimes you just want someone to lay out guidelines for how to put the
newest fitness research into practice.
An article in the May-June issue of the American College of Sports
Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal does just that. In 12 exercises
deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest
mandates for high-intensity effort, which essentially combines a long
run and a visit to the weight room into about seven minutes of steady
discomfort — all of it based on science.
“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training
provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training
but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise
physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and
co-author of the new article.
Interval training, though, requires intervals; the extremely intense
activity must be intermingled with brief periods of recovery. In the
program outlined by Mr. Jordan and his colleagues, this recovery is
provided in part by a 10-second rest between exercises. But even more,
he says, it’s accomplished by alternating an exercise that emphasizes
the large muscles in the upper body with those in the lower body. During
the intermezzo, the unexercised muscles have a moment to,
metaphorically, catch their breath, which makes the order of the
exercises important.
The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30
seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8
on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes
should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes,
you’re done.
