Any exercise is better than none.
But, for those able to do it, higher intensity exercise — running, rather than walking, for example — can further boost the health payoff, such as increasing cardiovascular benefits.
Unfortunately, experts say that with roughly two-thirds of Americans considered overweight or obese, starting or sticking to a demanding exercise routine is an uphill battle. Physical exertion alone can deter many, and something else may be at play, too: perception of effort.
Recent research suggests, though, that short bursts of hard exercise, with breaks in between — or high-intensity interval training — may reduce so-called perceptual drift, compared with continuous exercise. Though further study is needed, some say HIT could provide an alternative option for unfit individuals dreading long runs or other continuous exercise to achieve improved fitness.
“At some point, all we’re trying to do is make exercise more palatable,” says Marcus Kilpatrick, an associate professor of exercise science at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and lead author of a study that examined how the duration of high intensity exercise intervals impacts peoples’ perception of exertion.
The research was published in May in the American College of Sport Medicine’s flagship journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
The study authors note that the rising popularity of HIT makes it a natural place to look amid concerns over average Americans’ lower-than-healthy activity levels. “Given the increased attention that HIT has received in recent years, the need for full consideration of this form of exercise is warranted,” the authors wrote.
The research didn’t focus on highly fit individuals, but instead on overweight, sedentary adults.
It found that doing shorter intervals of high intensity exercise, such as repeated 30- or 60-second intervals, produced lower rated perceived exertion, or RPE, values among study participants, compared with doing 20 minutes of continuous exercise. That, despite the fact that the interval trials lasted slightly longer, in total, and were equal in intensity overall to continuous exercise. Study authors concluded: “Because effort perception may influence behavior, these results could have implications for the prescription of interval training in overweight sedentary adults.”
More study is needed to determine the relationship between perceived effort and future behavior, like how perceived exertion affects the likelihood a person would stick with a new exercise routine. But Kilpatrick and other study authors noted that it’s important to consider an individual’s perception of an exercise experience alongside objective measures of exercise intensity, like heart rate.
“It’s crucial that when someone starts out with an exercise program, they have a positive experience,” Kilpatrick says.
From a big-picture standpoint, experts say better understanding of the role perception plays might provide insights that help individuals stay active where public health messages to get off the couch fall short.
“It’s an interesting study in that it’s getting some sense of whether the length of the interval will impact the perception of the person,” says Pete Bodary, clinical assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “That’s important obviously because adherence to such an exercise regime is going to be a really important factor in whether people will continue with [it].”
Just as doctors express dismay over patients’ routine failure to take prescribed medications, exercise experts say most of us have difficulty sticking with a fitness regimen.
“As everybody is maybe painfully aware — adherence to physical activity regime or exercise regime is one of the big struggles,” Bodary says. “I don’t think it’s education. I don’t think it’s that people are not convinced that exercise or physical activity is important. It’s just getting them to do it.”
Still, he cautions, despite the promise of higher intensity exercise, it’s still important to start slowly and work up in intensity. “For somebody who’s totally unfit and hasn’t seen exercise for a long time, the higher the intensity of that exercise, the greater the risk of these major cardiac events,” he says.
“Where that’s been most evident is when people have been doing nothing — and in Michigan this is a big issue — they’ve been doing nothing and suddenly they decide they’re going to be the hero who goes out and shovels the heavy snow in the winter. And every winter we have people dying.”
Despite such rare tragedies, he and others reiterate the tantamount importance of exercising — including to improve cardiovascular health — rather than letting difficulties stand in the way of being physically active.
Online physical activity readiness questionnaires, like this one offered by the University of Michigan, can help individuals determine if they need to speak with a physician before beginning an exercise routine — whether high-intensity interval training or not.
“This kind of exercise might not be appropriate for all people, like older individuals, or the older adult, or people that have more significant health problems than being overweight,” says Patty Freedson, professor and chair of the department kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. She notes, as study authors did, that the study focused on overweight, sedentary young adults.
Where current health recommendations typically focus on the total amount of exercise a person should do, the research is intriguing because it suggests that it’s important to look, too, at interval duration, Freedson says.
“What these data suggest is that this shorter duration, higher intensity, repeated bouts with equivalent rest periods in between, at least from a perception-of-effort point of view, might be better, or at least an alternative possibility,” she says.
Bodary says for anyone who still doesn’t know where to start with exercise, this simple exercise mantra remains: “Do something,” he says. “If this is something that’s more palatable for people, something they’re more likely to adhere to, there’s definitely benefits of that higher intensity work.”
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Is High-Intensity Interval Training Your Get-Fit Answer? originally appeared on usnews.com
