Study Exercise more intensively in two minutes than with normal sports for 30 minutes

How is sport the most effective?

Sport is well known for body and mind. There are different opinions about how sports training should be done to be as effective as possible. Researchers have now found that a few minutes of high-intensity exercise can do as much as a much longer moderate workout, at least at the cellular level.

Scientists from Victoria University in Australia found in their recent research that short hard physical training can be just as effective as much longer training at moderate intensity. The experts published the results of their study in the English language journal "American Physiological Society".

Give two minutes of exercise to stay fit?

If your usual excuse for lack of exercise is that you just do not have enough time, it's better to look for a new excuse now. Because even a short hard training can have strong positive effects. Researchers found in their research that riding two minutes of maximum power on a bike has the same health and body effects as a slower 30-minute ride. Two minutes could already be enough to keep your body fit and healthy over the long term.

How does sport affect the cells??

The average person pays attention to how long he has been exercising to assess the effectiveness of the athletic workout. The scientists studied the cells of the participants in their study to estimate the training effect. Among the most important cellular benefits of sport are the effects on the so-called mitochondria, the organelles that produce the energy for our cells. As they grow older, mitochondria work slower and gradually produce less and less energy. Movement revives the mitochondria, however.

Through sport, mitochondria replicate more

In addition, physical activity also appears to signal to the mitochondria that they replicate themselves more and create more energy sources for the cells. A 2017 study suggests that the impact of training on mitochondria and certain proteins could ultimately explain why exercise is so healthy for humans.

What kind of training has been studied?

The scientists studied eight young adult volunteers for their current study as they tried three different exercise plans. During training, the participants rode continuously for 30 minutes on the bike, but with less than half of their maximum effort. Another training schedule was based on a high-intensity interval (HIIT) workout where subjects spent five to four minutes on the bike using 75 percent of their maximum power. In between, a one-minute break was taken in each case. The final training included four sprints on the bike, where the subjects raced as fast as possible, each for 30 seconds with a four and a half minute break in between.

Results could improve metabolic health of the population

When the researchers analyzed the mitochondria in the thigh muscles of the cyclists, they found that the cells of the subjects who had completed 30-second sprints had been just as positively influenced as the moderately intense cyclists. This suggests that sport can be prescripted according to individual preferences while still producing similar signals that are known to enable favorable metabolic adaptations, the authors of the study write. These results are important to improve understanding of how exercise can be used to positively affect metabolic health in the general population. (As)