Long Workout Not as Beneficial as Short Bursts, Study Indicates
CORAL GABLES, Fla. — People who do aerobic exercises in short, intense bursts showed a significant improvement in fitness over people who do long workouts, a new study says.
Nonstop workouts are the norm in aerobic dance classes, but the study at the University of Miami Human Performance Laboratory indicates that short rest periods during heavy aerobic exercise are more beneficial than continuous exercise for improving cardiovascular fitness.
Dr. Arlette Perry, who conducted the study, is to present the findings to the American College of Sports Medicine in May.
66 Women Studied
The 12-week study of 66 young women whose fitness level was average or slightly below average showed that participants in the interval aerobic exercise group improved their maximum oxygen consumption and decreased their percentage of body fat.
Also, the study indicated that interval exercising delayed the onset of pain attributed to a buildup of lactic acid in the muscles.
Perry said many women cannot keep up in aerobic classes where there are 40 minutes to an hour of intense exercise.
“What bothered me is that the kids themselves were stopping or slowing down on the basis of how they felt with no controlled stopping or starting,” Perry said.
The study found that women who performed several minutes of vigorous dancing, followed by walking or jogging lightly, were able to keep up and get better results.
Source of Discouragement
Fatigue is one of the primary reasons people are discouraged from exercising, said Dr. Donald Michielli, professor and director of the Laboratory of Work Physiology at Brooklyn College.
“The benefit of interval training is that one achieves a high-quality workout,” Michielli said. “Physiologically, it enables the person leading the class to get participants up to target level for maximum fitness benefit.”
A total of 15 minutes of intense exercise three times a week is enough to produce a conditioning effect, Michielli said. Each session should consist of five intervals of three minutes each where about 70% of peak heart rate is reached.
