Six Minutes to a Fit You?
Friday, July 3rd, 2009 @ 12:58pm
A boat of sports scientists, including Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, believe this to be true.
But like everything, it comes with a catch!
Gibala and his team of scientists conducted research on two separate groups of healthy, fairly active college students and found startling results: one group rode a stationary bike for 90-120 minutes and the other group rode the stationary bike for a total of 6 minutes at hard 20-30 second intervals.
While both groups exercised three times per week, Gibala and his team found that both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance and indentical molecular changes that signal increased fitness.
"The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance."
So, like anything else, if you want the results in no-time, you need to possess a hard, well-earned effort.
That's not to say you can't exercise for an hour six times a week, though. It tends to be more enjoyable to go at your own pace and revel in feeling your muscles work instead of grinding yourself to the core!
What do you all prefer?
A boat of sports scientists, including Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, believe this to be true.
But like everything, it comes with a catch!
Gibala and his team of scientists conducted research on two separate groups of healthy, fairly active college students and found startling results: one group rode a stationary bike for 90-120 minutes and the other group rode the stationary bike for a total of 6 minutes at hard 20-30 second intervals.
While both groups exercised three times per week, Gibala and his team found that both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance and indentical molecular changes that signal increased fitness.
"The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance."
So, like anything else, if you want the results in no-time, you need to possess a hard, well-earned effort.
That's not to say you can't exercise for an hour six times a week, though. It tends to be more enjoyable to go at your own pace and revel in feeling your muscles work instead of grinding yourself to the core!
What do you all prefer?
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