Last night I saw an interesting documentary called The Truth About Exercise with Dr. Michael Mosley. I like him because he's willing to do all sorts of crazy experiments on himself. He looked at new research coming out about exercise, and how some of it is surprisingly at odds with current knowledge. A few things stood out for me.
The concept of 'fitness non-responders'. Exercise plans are not one-size-fits-all. Everyone is different. That makes sense. But it's been found that there are actually 11 genes which control how the body reacts to exercise. Everyone fits on a scale, with fitness high-responders at one end (those people who hit the gym and within a few weeks can run a half-marathon, I guess) to fitness non-responders at the other end (those people who slog it out month after month and see very little improvement, or none at all). It seems the majority of people tested so far fall closter to the 'non' end of the scale. And for those people, no matter how long and hard they exercise, or what activity they do, it's not really going to help improve their cardiovascular fitness. Dr. Mosley was at the very bottom end, and he was obviously very discouraged, as I imagine most people would be. There are two ways of finding out how you fit on the scale - both cost a lot in terms of either money or effort/time spent:
1. a genetic test.
2. a cardiovascular fitness test, then 4 weeks of going to the gym for 1-hour-long workouts, 4 times per week, then another cardiovascular fitness test.
From personal experience, I think I fit on the low to medium part of the scale. If I start exercising, not having done any for a while, I definitely notice improvements in my energy levels and endurance. I'm no Olympic athlete! But enough to encourage me to keep going. That's why I say I'm a 'low/medium' rather than a 'non'.
I suppose if you find out that you're a fitness non-responder or even low-responder, it's important to keep in mind the other benefits of exercise: reducing stress levels, better sleep, better circulation, reduced risk of diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Another test in the show demonstrated that movement (it doesn't have to be strenuous) triggers the body to process fat in the bloodstream. According to Nessbow's recent blog post, it also makes your skin clearer because the sweat flushes out your pores.
And perhaps it helps to know if you're a fitness non-responder - you can spend all those hours you would have spent slogging away in the gym, volunteering for a charity or spending time with your family instead. While you're waiting for the researchers to come up with an exercise that will help you (which they're currently working on, we're assured).
The next concept I found interesting was NEAT (Non-Exercise Active Thermogenesis). It's the incidental activities that you do every day which isn't classed as exercise, but adds to calorie-burning. Things like taking the stairs instead of the lift, etc. It's a concept that the Government has been promoting for a while, but this researcher has been doing further work into it. He was so enthusiastic about it, I found myself getting on board with it. He got 3 people to wear special undies with sensors in them, and monitored their movement for 24 hours. A woman working in a cafe was moving around almost the whole time she was awake, though she didn't do any formal exercise. A man who worked in an office sat most of the day, and his movement levels only really spiked when he went to the gym. And then there was Dr. Mosley, who doesn't exercise and spends most of his time writing or watching TV with his family - he didn't move much at all.
It was clear that, although the woman from the cafe didn't do any formal exercise, she did a lot more moving overall than the others. And this, according to the NEAT man, is the key. The human body isn't designed to sit and be still for extended periods (more than an hour at a time), and it's doing us a lot of damage. The upshot is: move as much as you can, and fidgeting is good! You don't have to spend hours in the gym if you incorporate movement into your every day life (I'm sure many of the non/low-responders were very pleased to hear this!) Though I thought his claim that chairs are killers was going a bit too far!
The other interesting concept from the show was the HIT Protocol (I forget what that stands for). This new research indicates that an occasional short burst of high intensity activity is more effective than longer bouts of moderate exercise. Dr. Mosley demonstrated by riding as fast as he could on a stationary bike on a high resistance setting for 20 seconds, resting 20 seconds and repeating 3 times (1 minute exercise in total). He did this 3 times a week for 4 weeks. Testing before and after showed that his body was processing glucose much more efficiently, and his cardiovascular fitness had increased significantly. Hard to believe! But the results were there to see.
It sounds so good, I'd like to give it a go myself. Sure, he looked like he was in pain, slogging his guts out, but it was only for one minute. I'm certainly not going to give up my other exercises - my lunchtime walks, which help relieve stress and re-focus me, my kinect dancing and para-para practice, which is so much fun. But if this can add something significant with such a small amount of time invested, it's worth having a go. I'm not going to buy an exercise bike, but I'm sure there are other high intensity exercises that don't need any equipment. When I have time I'll google, and start soon.
There's more information in this interview he did after making the show.
Here's Horizon TV's 3-minute exercise plan and how it works.
