Sprinting for seconds better than jogging

Spend the rest of the week on the couch

Posted in Science, 6th June 2005 15:10 GMT

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Sell that Nike stock and buy into EasychairsRUS. Researchers have found that 90 seconds of sprinting delivers the same benefit as an hour’s worth of jogging.

The information will leave couch potatos all over the world full of hope, and comes from scientists at Canada’s McMaster University's department of kinesiology. They took a group of 16 subjects. Half were subjected to a two week sprint interval training program, which included four to seven 30 second bursts of “all out cycling” followed by four minutes of recovery, repeated three times a week. The other eight did absolutely nothing.

The kinesiologists found that the sprinters increased their endurance by an average of 26 minutes. They went so far as to say the sprinters showed “profound changes in skeletal muscle and endurance capacity, similar to training that requires hours of exercise each week.” The do nothing group, by comparison, showed absolutely no improvement whatsoever.

No doubt some chiselled fitness guru in California is already chugging down a skinny latte as he sketches out an exercise book and video series featuring such fat-busting exercises as running for the lift, sprinting to the bus stop, and popping a ready meal in the microwave and haring round the room until it goes bing

An equally viable option, as far as we’re concerned, is to do absolutely bugger all. McMaster has also shown that while a few seconds of fast and furious sprinting can deliver a health boost, sitting on your backside isn’t going to do you any harm.

More details here. ®