By Efren Martinez
Fitness Bursts
The standard has been set up for years, long workouts are the most beneficial to your overall health and life span. Or are they? Just recently all this has changed. New studies out now are continually starting to show that fitness bursts are and can be just as effective as those long, moderate pace workouts. This is great news for those who have a very busy lifestyle between work, family and our household responsibilities.
Life’s coming at you fast and getting into a gym for an hour several times a week just isn’t doable sometimes. Friends, no worries. The new studies that are now being published say that yes, you can actually reap much greater benefits by exercising in short, high-intensity bursts known as intervals than you can exercising for longer periods at a slower steady pace. Data showed that participants who got less than 20 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) a day were at the highest risk of death among the entire group. MVPA included brisk walking, bicycling slower than 10 miles per hour, tennis, gardening, water aerobics and ballroom dancing. By comparison, those who got 60 to 99 minutes a day of MVPA were about half as likely to have died, and those who got 100 or more minutes a day were three-quarters less likely to have died. Studies also found that sustaining bouts of physical activity played no factor in overall health.
The accumulated minutes of exercise had the same benefit, regardless of whether the physical activity was performed in short bursts throughout the day or in concentrated sessions that were at least 5 or 10 minutes in duration. So instead of dress shoes you generally wear to work, sport some athletic shoes so that you can incorporate some sudden bursts of fitness throughout your day. Some of my recommendations would be the take the stairs as often as you can instead of the elevator, always park father away from your destination, walking at a brisk walk whenever possible and even skipping rope in place for just a few minutes several times a day. All this will do wonders to achieving your MVPA.
