{"id":58029,"date":"2017-06-26T09:48:36","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T14:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=58029"},"modified":"2017-06-26T09:48:36","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T14:48:36","slug":"get-intense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/inspiration\/get-intense\/","title":{"rendered":"Get Intense!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the course of years, the exercise recommendations for good health seems to change every few years. If you are old enough, you probably remember when the recommendation for aerobic exercise was to walk 20 minutes, 3 times a week.\u00a0 <\/span>Of course, what we know today from ongoing research and what we knew 45 years ago are worlds apart.\u00a0 <\/span>That 20 minutes became 30 minutes which became more than 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise most days of the week.\u00a0 <\/span>In 2008, we got the following instructions for how much exercise we should be doing to reap substantial health benefits;\u00a0 <\/span>all Americans should perform at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity\u2014or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity\u2014aerobic physical activity each week.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yaacov Meir is a 51 year old skype client from New Jersey.\u00a0 <\/span>He is overweight with a BMI of 31.4 and has high blood pressure and is pre-diabetic.\u00a0 <\/span>His family physician has him on two different blood pressure medications, both of which have had noticeable side effects and he also has begun a minimal dose of Glucophage to keep his sugar in check.\u00a0 <\/span>His doctor also asked him to do daily walks of 30 minutes each.\u00a0 <\/span>Although his sugar has gotten lower, it is still too high and the blood pressure meds have only lowered his pressure slightly.\u00a0 <\/span>He got in touch with my office asking if we can help him restore good health.\u00a0 <\/span>After his initial workup with one of our dieticians, we began to concentrate more on his exercise and some very interesting results occurred, but it took a while. <\/span><\/p>\n

As Yaacov had already been doing 30 minute daily walks at moderate intensity, I began to talk to him about the great benefits of exercising more intensely when possible.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s absolutely true that moderate exercise has many benefits.\u00a0 <\/span>For many if not most people, getting in the 150 minutes per week while staying active otherwise can improve your health, prevent many terrible diseases and can enhance your quality of life.\u00a0 <\/span>But if we can increase the intensity from time to time, all of these benefits can be far more pronounced.\u00a0 <\/span>In addition, there are some advantages to higher intensity exercise that we just won\u2019t get from moderate exercise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

How can I get more intense?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t practical for most of us adults to exercise intensely all the time.\u00a0 <\/span>All out exercising doesn\u2019t give us aerobic benefit if we are above the aerobic range and the risk of injury is much higher.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s one thing when we are children or teenagers running around playing all the time, but as adults, our bodies aren\u2019t built for that and needless to say, we are highly occupied with the daily responsibilities of learning, working, and raising our families.\u00a0 <\/span>So, how can I get the benefits of high intensity exercise without getting hurt and with actually saving time and maximizing my workout time?\u00a0 <\/span>The answer is to use a technique called High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).\u00a0 <\/span>It can be applied to any form of exercise. Newer research has revealed that short\u2013burst HIIT, or sprint interval training elicits meaningful cardiovascular and metabolic responses (Boutcher 2011).<\/span><\/p>\n

What is HIIT and how do I apply it?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/b>basic <\/b>idea <\/b>is to take any aerobic exercise you might be doing, let\u2019s say you are walking 35 minutes per day at a moderate pace, and every so often, doing the same exercise more intensely.\u00a0 <\/span>So in this case, every fourth minute or so you can power walk as fast as you can or break into a jog for one minute and then you would go back into the original pace you were walking for another four minutes and then repeating this again for the entire 35 minute session.\u00a0 <\/span>If you were swimming you can decide that every tenth lap will be very fast and then return to your previous pace.\u00a0 <\/span>So the 10<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span>, 20<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span>, 30<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> laps and so on, will be almost all out effort.\u00a0 <\/span>You can apply this to biking or any other aerobic mode you are using.\u00a0 <\/span>Speed is only one way to add intensity.\u00a0 <\/span>Using hills, steps, inclines on a treadmill or putting more resistance on your exercise bike or elliptical every so often also does the job.\u00a0 <\/span>The benefits of exercising in this manner are very beneficial. <\/span><\/p>\n

The benefits of HIIT<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

The benefits of higher intensity exercise in general are well known and all of them are realized using HIIT.\u00a0 <\/span>In other words, by adding occasional intensity into your current workout, you get all the same great health benefits without adding any additional (and valuable) time to your workouts. Here are the main benefits of HIIT:<\/span><\/p>\n