For heart disease prevention, research says you should include brief bursts of high intensity exercise in your regimen. This kind of exercise improves the blood vessels’ structure and function. I’m a certified personal trainer, and this research comes from McMaster University.
Explains Maureen MacDonald of the MU’s department of kinesiology: "As we age, the arteries become stiffer and tend to lose their ability to dilate, and these effects contribute to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.”
The report is in the online American Journal of Physiology, and says what I’ve been reverberating for years: Short bursts of intense activity are just as effective for preventing heart disease as is steady state (long duration) exercise.
The study involved a comparison of people who completed 30-second “sprints” of all-out effort, three times weekly, to people who performed 40-60 minutes of medium intensity, steady state cycling five times weekly.
The results? After six weeks, the short-burst intense exercise benefited the function and structure of blood vessels as much as did the longer duration, less intense exercise (which of course, took up much more time) – and this equates to heart disease prevention.
The study supports the idea of people with cardiovascular problems performing intense interval training, as well as those with peripheral artery disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
I once had a 31-year-old client with peripheral vascular disease that made it painful to walk. I had her perform high intensity interval training on a recumbent bike.
She’d pedal her heart out for 30 seconds, then cruise for 90 seconds, and repeat this alternation for about 20-25 minutes…twice a week. Despite her ailment, she had no problem carrying out this type of exercise, and lost fat as a result.
In diseased populations, brief bursts of intense activity are often much more tolerated than sustained exercise at moderate effort. One must also consider the psychological component of this kind of training on an individual with compromised health.
The idea of spending 40, let alone 60, minutes pedaling on a bike or elliptical machine, or in an ultra-loud aerobics room, can be dreadful. The exertion is nonstop.
However, with short bursts of intense exercise, the exertion lasts 30 seconds (or a minute or somewhere in between), with a minute to several minutes of easy paced activity alternated.
This is psychologically very welcoming, including to healthy people simply seeking ways to prevent heart disease. When you know you’ll be huffing and puffing for no more than a minute, the exercise session becomes far more tolerable. So for heart disease prevention, include short bursts of intense exercise.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080604101529.htm
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