Squeeze more exercise into less time

Quick—what’s the No. 1 reason you either don’t exercise or don’t log as many workouts as you’d like?

Most women I know will say “not enough time!” I say it too. We’re all overscheduled, with so many more commitments than our calendars can hold.

But here’s yet another study (among many) suggesting that brief, intense exercise provides fabulous benefits. OK, so maybe you’re not getting the 30 minutes, five days a week that major health organizations recommend. Can you squeeze in 75 minutes a week, warm-ups and cool-downs included? 

One of the advantages of exercise is the positive effect it has on blood sugar levels. Your muscles’ preferred fuel is glucose (blood sugar), so any form of muscular movement consumes glucose and thus reduces its level in your blood. When you exercise, your body is also able to use insulin more effectively, and that too results in greater “consumption” of blood glucose.

As you can imagine, this is great for diabetics. But it has positive implications for others too.

A study published in the December 2011 Journal of Applied Physiology looked at eight people with diabetes who used an exercise bike to perform 10 one-minute bouts of work at 90 percent of their maximal heart rate, with each bout followed by a minute of rest. That’s working very, very hard, and you can bet they were under medical supervision during these sessions.

They weren’t spring chickens either, with an average age of 63. Their average body mass index was 32, which is obese.

Just two weeks of this regime, three times weekly, resulted in a 13 percent drop in their average 24-hour blood-glucose level. That’s pretty significant, and you’d hope that the results would be even better over time and with longer sessions. You can read the study’s abstract here.

High-intensity training isn’t just for diabetics. It’s for anyone who wants to get a terrific cardio workout in a hurry.

Aerobic fitness is measured by how much oxygen your body can consume during intense exercise, or your V02 max. The traditional exercise prescription for improving oxygen uptake is simply to perform lots of cardio, typically at moderate intensity. But we now know that high-intensity intervals (like the ones used in the study described above) greatly improve V02 max, and in a hurry.

Interval training also provides another truly major goodie: excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). In translation, that means we consume more oxygen than usual—and thus burn more calories than usual—for quite a while after performing high-intensity training. So even if you’re sitting on the couch a few hours after doing your intervals, you’re using more energy than you typically do while sedentary.

One caveat about high-intensity exercise: It’s not for those who are starting from square one. You need to build a fitness foundation before embarking on intervals.

If you belong to a gym, ask the trainers for advice on getting started with intervals. Or see your doctor to get medical clearance.

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