Can a 4 minute workout replace going to the gym for that lengthy workout?

Can a 4 minute workout replace going to the gym for that lengthy workout?

Many people work out at least three times per week trying to stay in shape. There are many of us who have a hard time finding or creating the free time to work out. According to the NY Times, a new study suggests that 4 minute workouts that can benefit you as much as a full workout. It comes down to the raising of your heart rate. Apparently, short workouts that can get your heart rate to increase to a certain level may be adequate or have a benefit as good as a full fledged workout. Read about it here

The 4-Minute Workout

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
Thanks to an ingratiating new study, we may finally be closer to answering that ever-popular question regarding our health and fitness: How little exercise can I get away with?

The answer, it seems, may be four minutes.

For the study, which was published last month in the journal PLoS One, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, and other institutions attempted to delineate the minimum amount of exercise required to develop appreciable endurance and health gains. They began by reconsidering their own past work, which had examined the effects of a relatively large dose of high-intensity intervals on various measures of health and fitness.

For those unfamiliar with the term, high-intensity intervals are just that: bursts of strenuous exercise lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes, interspersed with periods of rest. In recent years, a wealth of studies have established that sessions of high-intensity exercises can be as potent, physiologically, as much longer bouts of sustained endurance exercise.

In a representative study from 2010, for instance, Canadian researchers showed that 10 one-minute intervals — essentially, 10 minutes of strenuous exercise braided with one-minute rest periods between — led to the same changes within muscle cells as about 90 minutes of moderate bike riding.

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