One of the biggest reasons people give for not working out is lack of time. I get that, but a lot can go wrong with your body when you don’t exercise.
Most experts say you need 150 minutes of exercise a week for optimal health benefits. When you’re busy keeping up with your job, spouse, kids, pets, house and yard, that 30 minutes a day, five days a week can seem impossible to set aside.
But there’s a way you can get the benefits of exercise in a third of the time. And all you need to get started is a pair of running shoes…
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Interval running: less time, more benefit
Running is great for your health. It can prevent disease, improve mental health and even slow the biological aging process.
But there’s something even better than regular running that takes a fraction of the time: interval running.
Interval running is based on high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which alternates between bursts of intense exercise and periods of rest or low-intensity exercise. The best thing about HIIT is that it turbo-charges your workouts, allowing you to complete them in a fraction of the time.
There are several interval-running methods. With the 10-20-30 method, runners start with 30 seconds of jogging or walking, then 20 seconds of running at a moderate pace, and finally a 10-second all-out sprint. They follow this pattern for the entire run.
In another method, known as fartlek, the runner mixes a few sprints in during their run instead of just keeping a steady pace.
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Benefits that blow regular running away
No matter how you do it, interval running has incredible health benefits — even more than regular running — for your cardiovascular system, metabolism and body composition.
Research has demonstrated that for overweight and obese people, sprints provided greater improvements in VO2 max, the amount of oxygen the body uses to fuel intense exercise.
In regular runners, a 12-week trial found that adding HIIT workouts to a weekly endurance run improved VO2 peak to a greater extent than longer continuous runs. VO2 peak is a measure of cardiovascular fitness that shows your cardiovascular capacity. A higher VO2 peak not only improves performance but also reduces the risk of death from any cause.
But it’s the improvements in metabolism and fat-burning that really stand out…
- More research has shown that interval walking and running have a greater impact on your metabolic health than continuous walking. It specifically improves blood glucose regulation, which can help lower the risk of type 2 diabetes.
- HIIT workouts have a bigger effect on the mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of our cells, than continuous exercise. This leads to greater stamina and a lower risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The 10-20-30 method also improves cholesterol and blood pressure more than continuous running, which lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease.
- And while both continuous running and HIIT can reduce levels of visceral fat — the dangerous fat stored around our organs — HIIT can do it in a more time-efficient way.
In each of these instances, the benefits of interval running were accrued in a fraction of the time it would take with a conventional run — as little as 18 minutes of sprint interval runs three times a week.
That’s a third of the oft-cited recommendation of 150 minutes a week.
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Getting started with interval running
First off, if you’ve been sedentary for a few years, it’s probably not a good idea to jump straight into interval running. Speak with your doctor to come up with an exercise plan that’s best for you, particularly if you have existing medical issues.
If you’re already a runner, or if you’re healthy and have been working out regularly, there are a few different ways to get started with interval running. One is to develop your own fartlek training method. For instance, if you usually run outdoors, you can try sprinting from one streetlight to the next, then recovering by walking or jogging to the next streetlight before sprinting again.
If you frequent a gym, many treadmills have pre-programmed interval training programs that alternate between sprints and recovery.
Sprints can be timed from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. The goal is to get your heart rate toward 90% of your maximum during the intense part to get the most benefits. It’s best to start by adding a few three-second sprints into your next run, then build the length of the sprints up over time. Also, make sure you recover sufficiently between sprints.
One caveat for people with diabetes: HIIT can temporarily increase blood sugar levels. So talk with your doctor before giving this a try.
Source:
How just minutes of running can supercharge your health — ScienceDaily
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