Is less good enough?

Dear Fitness Coach,

First there was some buzz about the 7-minute workout, and now I heard it’s down to 4 minutes. Can you really get in shape in such a short period of time, or is this just another ridiculous fad?

Crazy or what??

Dear What??,

The No. 1 reason people cite for not working out consistently is lack of time. So it makes sense that sports science and medical researchers have focused their efforts on trying to find out if less is good enough. The popular belief is: the more you work out, the healthier you are. What these studies have shown is it’s not about duration as much as it is about intensity. High-intensity is the operative word here. A study published in the American College of Sports Medicine Health & Fitness Journal last month backs this finding up. “There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla.

The aim is to work out at 90% of your maximum heart rate for those 4 to 7 minutes. Think of it on a rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale of 1-10: 1 is sleeping and 10 is so hard you are gasping for breath. You want to be at an RPE of 9 for the entire workout. It is strenuous and unsustainable for longer periods, but effective. There are definite metabolic and cardiovascular health benefits resulting from as little as 4 minutes of exercise three times a week. This is an important discovery for people that claim they do not have time to exercise and for those that do not like to exercise.

However, if weight loss is your goal then you need to commit to a minimum of 120 minutes a week or 3 one-hour workouts. As with dieting, there are no quick-fix remedies in exercise that work long-term. It’s all about consistency and lifestyle habit changes.