You can be healthy with as little as six minutes of intense exercise a week.

Just six minutes of intense exercise a week does as much to improve a person's fitness as a regime of six hours, according to a study.

Moderately healthy men and women could cut their workouts from two hours a day, three times a week, to just two minutes a day and still achieve the same results, claim medical researchers.

The two-minute workout requires cycling furiously on a stationary bike in four 30-second bursts. Professor Martin Gibala, the author of the study, said: “The whole excuse that ‘I don't have enough time to exercise’ is directly challenged by these findings. This has the potential to change the way we think about keeping fit.

“We thought there would be benefits but we did not expect them to be this obvious. It shows how effective short intense exercise can be.”

Professor Gibala led the research team at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada which found that short bursts of intensive activity followed by rest are much better for the body and create greater weight loss than exercise that calls on endurance – such as a cardio workouts, running and aerobics.

Short bouts of high-intensity exertion trigger adaptive changes in the body. Blood sugar is used more efficiently, fat is easily burned and performance ability skyrockets.

To be effective - especially over time - applying rest, recovery and progressive changes (gradually increasing the amount and intensity of exercise done) is also critical.

These findings have also been supported by researchers in Quebec’s Laval University who divided exercisers into two groups: long-duration and repeated short-duration.

They had the long-duration group cycle 45 minutes without interruption. The short-duration group cycled in multiple short bursts of 15 to 90 seconds, with rests in between.

The long-duration group burned twice as many calories, so you would assume they would burn more fat. However, when the researchers recorded their body composition measurements, the short-burst group in fact lost nine times more fat than the endurance group for every calorie burned!

You may be thinking – doesn’t this defy the laws of physics? Not really, when you realise that exercise continues to affect your metabolism after you stop. The short bursts stimulated a greater ‘after burn’ and thus used more calories overall.

In addition, exertion in brief bursts followed by recovery produces other benefits to your metabolic health.

Here are just a few:

Raise Your Levels of Human Growth Hormone: This is your body’s ‘anti-aging’ hormone. It’s been shown to build muscle, melt fat, improve bone density, raise your ‘good’ cholesterol, and reverse the negative effects of aging. Blood levels of this hormone rise dramatically during and immediately after short bursts of intense exercise while traditional aerobic exercise has no effect.

Burn More Calories:  After intense bursts of exercise, your body needs to burn extra calories to repair muscles, replenish energy, and bring your body back to its ‘normal’ state. This process takes anywhere from a few hours up to a whole day – meaning you’ll burn calories long after your workout is over.

Build a More Powerful Heart:  Short bursts of intense exercise demand more oxygen. Your heart adapts by increasing both its heart rate and stroke volume (the amount of blood your heart can pump in one beat). This increased pumping power makes your heart stronger.

Long-duration exercise like aerobics and cardio burn fat during your workout but this practice sends a message to your body that you need a reserve of fat available for the next time you do long-duration exercise.

This self-defeating cycle ensures that your body makes more fat every time you finish exercising.

That’s why so many people have such a hard time losing fat at the gym. Every time you burn fat during exercise, you body reacts by making more.

With short intense exercise sessions of between 6 minutes but never more than 20 minutes’ duration, your body never has a chance to burn fat during exercise. Rather, it burns carbohydrates from muscle tissue.

This triggers your ‘after-burner’. After you finish your exercise session, your body will burn fat to replace the carbs it has just used. In fact, your body continues to burn fat for up to 24 hours after you finish… even while you sleep.

For our ancient ancestors this was natural. They didn’t run marathons or jump around for an hour at a time without a break. They exerted themselves in brief bursts, then rest. It was a matter of survival. This pattern of brief intensity, followed by rest, is hardwired in our genes.

Aerobic and cardio training – the kind most doctors and even the federal government promote as the path to good health – can actually damage your body.

The Harvard study followed over 7,000 people. They found that the key to protect your heart is exactly the opposite of ‘cardio’ type exercise. Intensity, not endurance, was the key to better heart function and lowering the risk of heart disease.

Another related Harvard study compared vigorous and light exercise. Those who performed exercise that was more vigorous had a lower risk of death than those who performed less vigorous exercise.

Aerobics and cardio are low-intensity, long-duration exercises. This Harvard study showed that this kind of exercise does not protect against heart disease.

Find the full article here:
http://jp.physoc.org/content/588/6/1011.full.pdf+html