Tuesday Letters

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Recommendation:Exercise hacks for people who don't like workouts

The Exercise Secret For Longevity:Martin Gibala, PhD on the mindbodygreen podcast via YouTube

For my people who really struggle to stay committed to an exercise program today is your day!! You will love this guy! He is exercise physiologist Martin Gibala, PhD and he is all about finding ways to exercise without it turning into a big production. 

His research shows how to significantly improve cardiorespiratory fitness with short (short as in seconds!! Not minutes!!) bursts of activity.

I’m not messing around here. These are things that many of you would be able to incorporate as soon as today (no fancy shoes, Lululemon, or equipment needed!). 

He discusses 3 different approaches in the podcast and I guarantee that you will like at least one of them. I’ll start with the easiest one to incorporate and I’ll end with the hardest. 

(Keep in mind that he will often refer to the term “vigorous” during the podcast interview which is an important concept and he goes to great length defining it.

However, for the purpose of brevity I decided to stick to the general principles and you can listen to his podcast or read his work here. Plus I'm in Aruba and I want to go to the beach)

1.The “non-exercise” exercise (my personal favorite!!)

The first one VILPA (vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity) is NOT STRUCTURED EXERCISE. It’s taking activities that are part of daily living and performing them in short vigorous bursts of 1- 2 minutes. 

 VILPA includes things like carrying grocery bags, carrying children, using stairs, vacuuming, raking, etc. In the research, people (who were all “non-exercisers”) who did 3 bouts of VILPA, lasting 1 to 2 minutes each showed a 38-40% reduction in all-cause and cancer mortality risk and a 48-49% reduction in cardiovascular mortality risk.

 Just in case you skimmed that above paragraph I’m going to emphasize this again. Doing everyday type of stuff like carrying shopping bags a few times a day, showed a significant reduction in all-cause mortality risk.

For a lot of us, these things are no longer everyday activities. We have our groceries delivered, hire house cleaners, take the elevator and try to find the closest parking spot. We’ve made our lives so easy that we can no longer count on the “everyday physical activity” to keep us moving. 

The host of the mindbodygreen podcast, Jason Wachob, says it perfectly, “It’s this idea of editing your day vs adding [to it ]” I love that!! 

2. If you love snacks you’ll love this one, “exercise snacking”.

 Exercise snacking is performing activities that last less than a minute and “sprinkling” them in during the day (Gibala defines it as less than a minute but other exercise experts define it as up to 10 minutes).

This can be anything from stair climbing or a short brisk walk down the  hallway to things like jumping jacks, air squats, or a wall sit.

This stuff adds up! And although most of the studies on exercise snacking is done to measure things like overall cardiorespiratory fitness and reductions in mortality risk. I favor these things for the actual movement itself. 

So much of my work as a physical therapist has been to mitigate sedentary behavior. I would often use the word “sprinkling” when asking people to move frequently throughout the day to recover from pain, injuries, or illness.

My biggest hurdle was convincing people that these small bouts of movement mattered. 

They wouldn’t believe me until they did it. My office workers who would go to the gym 3 times a week for their 60 minute workout were convinced that sprinkling super short walks throughout the day  wouldn’t do anything for them.

Until their pain went away that is. (I would also add in a couple of other super simple techniques or modifications but a big part of recovery for these particular patients was getting out of the chair more frequently). 

3. The One-Minute Workout

The One-Minute Workout which is what Gibala is well known for, is a form of high intensity interval training (or HIIT) and is made up of only three 20 second bursts of hard effort three times a week. 

More specifically, you would warm up 2-3 minutes, do a 20 second “sprint” (this doesn’t have to be a running type of “sprint”, this could also be all out effort on a bike, a rower, high knees, etc), then a 2 minute recovery, then a 2nd “sprint”, then a 2 minute recovery, then the third “sprint” followed by a short cool down.

I know, I know. Technically it takes 10 minutes to complete BUT there is only 1 minute of effort (all out effort I might add).

But his research has shown that the One Minute Workout protocol, when compared to the more traditional workout guidelines, has shown the same improvement to cardiorespiratory fitness as well as improvements to insulin sensitivity. 

He is quick to point out that he in no way recommends that these activities replace any kind of workout that you already have going. And it certainly wouldn't replace the kind of workouts that he enjoys (like bike riding out in nature).

But in terms of impacting longevity, reducing all-cause mortality risk, and reducing cardiovascular and cancer mortality risk these short bursts of activity matter a lot.

And it bears repeating that from a personal perspective, I have seen the results of these short bursts of activity impact people of all ages and abilities when it comes to their recovery from injury and illness.

I love this guy's work. If you really want to get into the specifics of his One-Minute Workout Protocol then for sure listen to the first part of the podcast.