Exercise is a key factor of optimal health; it's particularly important for controlling your blood sugar and normalizing your insulin levels. We often recommend viewing exercise as a drug that needs to be properly prescribed and "taken" at a proper dosage.
When done correctly, exercise can often times act as a substitute for some of the most common drugs used today for things like diabetes, heart disease and depression. Of course, we are not saying come off any medication unless you have consulted your physician but exercise is being prescribed more and more as a first line of defense against these afflictions.
There are many versions of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), but the core premise involves maximum exertion followed by a quick rest period for a set of intervals.
A recent article in the American College of Sports Medicine’s Health & Fitness Journal shows how you can fulfill the requirements for a high intensity exercise using nothing more than your own body weight, a chair, and a wall.
Best of all, this science-backed routine only requires a nine-minute investment, as the program calls for as little as 10- to 15-seconds of rest between each 30-second exercise, which should be performed in rapid succession.
As reported by the New York Times:
“'There’s very good evidence that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,' says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article.”
The health benefits of high intensity interval training are well-established at this point, and include:
Significantly improving your insulin sensitivity, especially if you're on a low-processed food, low-sugar/low-grain diet
Optimizing your cholesterol ratios, when combined with a proper diet
Boosting fat metabolism and optimizing your body fat percentage (as a result of improved conservation of sugar and glycogen in your muscles)
Virtually eliminating type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure
Naturally boosting your levels of human growth hormone (HGH)
Increasing your aerobic capacity
One of the added benefits of this 7-minute program is that since you don’t need any equipment, you can easily take this routine with you when traveling. You’d be hard pressed to find a hotel room that doesn’t at least have a chair in it. When done at the appropriate intensity, which should hover around 8 on a scale of 1- 10, the following 12 exercises, which are outlined in the report, equate to doing a long run and a weight training session.
The exercises are ideally done in the following order, as this allows for opposing muscle groups to alternate between resting and working in each subsequent exercise. Consult your physical therapist before starting so they can modify any of these to better fit your body but we will be talking more about HIIT programs as I believe this and stretching is a better way for people to exercise (especially the ones with very limited schedules or don’t like to exercise).
**Remember to
1. Always plan ahead for what you are going to eat
2. Obtain adequate amounts of protein
3. Work on flexibility
4. Supplement your diet with a fish oil and multi-vitamin
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