The science gets lost again

I wondered how the gym industry would handle it.  Science says that workouts could be reduced to 1 minute 3 times a week and still be effective.  HIT (or high intensity training) had the potential to crush an industry.

So how did they manage?  According to an article in today’s Sydney Morning Herald, reprinted from The Telegraph London, some gyms have co-opted a degree of the rhetoric but turned a HIT workout into 35 minutes 3 times a week, that is if you really want a total body work out.  How convenient that 35 minutes plus changing time and shower will fit neatly into a routine lunch hour!

Something else of the original research got lost somewhere.  The newspaper article makes much of the production of sweat.  Yet, I distinctly remember that Horizon episode featuring Michael Mosely on the training bike, and there was no sweat.  The idea was that you could do the workout in your suit; no shower required.

Thankfully, The Telegraph’s author did make a great point at the end of the article.  HIT is nothing new.  Short sprints have been part of athletics training for decades.  The difference now is we have increasing amounts of science to back it up.

Is the science getting distorted in the name of business … again?

In my Year of Sweat Squared, I’m happy to include activities that don’t involve sweat as long as I’m making some headway incorporating more movement into my life.  But movement shouldn’t be just 35 minutes in a gym, or even just 1 minute, 3 times a week.

I want it to be an attitude.

I got off the bike to write this.  I’d better get back to it.  Don’t forget – Two every Twenty.