CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!

85% of us are wasting our time...

(35 posts)
  • Started 12 years ago by Baldcyclist
  • Latest reply from Cyclingmollie

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12

  1. Baldcyclist
    Member

    Potentially interesting Horizon programme on BBC tonight about exercise:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

    3 minutes intensive exercise a week is all we need apparently.

    We are told to do more and more exercise, more is better, you can see why lots of people would encourage us to do that, and then reference to all of the money made from buying kit etc...

    I'll stick to my hours and hours a week on the saddle, because I enjoy it, but given my waist measurements and lung capacity I most definitely am one of the 85% who may be wasting their time.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  2. Baldcyclist
    Member

    I may however introduce the 3 x 20s bursts of intensive exercise on my commute 3 times a week though.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  3. Dave
    Member

    The premise is interesting (get the cardio benefit in a fraction of the time) but it doesn't address the raging obesity epidemic.

    BMI is a relatively good indicator of life expectency (the top score being "morbidly obese" and all...) and at 7700kcal/kg you can't lose weight without sustained effort.

    For instance, oh, a 30 minute bike commute might win you 400kcal a day, or 1kg of fat every working month (for a total fat loss of 120kg per decade). Good luck achieving that with 30s intervals every few days!

    (Happily, the laws of thermodynamics also guarantee that you can lose weight this way, whatever your genetic makeup).

    Posted 12 years ago #

  4. ARobComp
    Member

    Agree with @Dave here. There is clearly some benefit to doing this sort of exercise - not just because it certainly stimulates endorphins and gets you more excited about exercise in general. I always feel pretty beat but so happy after a REALLY hard interval session! so I think doing a small part of that sort of thing would be good for people, most people don't even get out of breath 3 times a week let alone do 3 20 second shots of exercise!

    I find it hard to lose weight as the more I train the heavier I get. Although despite being fit my BMI is a bit mad - I'm currently obese!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  5. Nelly
    Member

    Ignoring the straight health benefits for a second to talk about weight / alcohol.

    Post operation last year, I couldn't drink for ~7 weeks (due to drugs).

    Despite being much much less active than I had been, my biggest worry (piling on the pounds) simply did not happen - in fact I lost about half a stone - very odd, I thought.

    Although I am now cycling almost every day, I am heavier than I was before getting back on the bike.

    Why? Nothing else stands out except I started drinking again - not 'heavily' but clearly I enjoy it enough that it has added weight.

    I reckon that my current exercise/commute, combined with zero beer intake would strip a stone in a month or so - but would I be happy??!!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  6. wingpig
    Member

    Hmmm. Cycling leg muscle is quite dense. I haven't drunk boozestuffs for about ten weeks and am the same weight I was ten weeks ago. However, it had probably been about ten weeks before that that I'd previously last drunk and I've been within half a stone of my current weight for twenty years.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  7. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    ARobComp: "I find it hard to lose weight as the more I train the heavier I get".

    Muscle is heavier than fat of course.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  8. ruggtomcat
    Member

    had 8 weeks off the booze last year also combined with a lot of training I managed to lose... nothing. #hardgainer

    Posted 12 years ago #

  9. cc
    Member

    @Dave Reading wikipedia on HIIT at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training it seems that HIIT does help with obesity; it "has been shown to burn fat more effectively" than other forms of exercise and has been found to be "associated with significant reductions in total body fat, subcutaneous leg and trunk fat, and insulin resistance".

    Posted 12 years ago #

  10. gembo
    Member

    I find the more I cycle the more I eat. Possibly fitter and maybe firmer but never any lighter. That would entail more cross training (running and swimming) - wait a minute I do that too. Oh yes - and dieting. At my extreme age it all just goes to halt the decline, which I will toast with some thunderbird wine [I WON'T AS IT IS NOT NICE but it is an Ian Dury lyric - Sweet Gene Vincent]

    Posted 12 years ago #

  11. amir
    Member

    I quite enjoyed the Horizon program on this last night. Not sure about all the science but I will definitely try to incorporate burst of high intensity in my cycling. I also liked the reminder that, for those of use that are deskbound, it is a great idea to get up for a wander every hour.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  12. Uberuce
    Member

    I'm not sure they're given enough attention to muscle fibre ratio. That's one of the things I guess they don't want to emphasise because it could be taken as a bit doom and gloom. The gist of it is the ratio of Type I and Type II muscle fibres is congenital and for all practical purposes unalterable.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  13. ARobComp
    Member

    @Tom "Muscle is heavier than fat of course."

    Of course. However it's often quite an incredible difference. Since cycle training started again (4 weeks now) I've gained 5KG and not lost anything from my 5km running time. Fairly incredible how much you can put on!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  14. Dave
    Member

    @cc (on the fat-burning thing): adding high-intensity activity to a routine would be more effective at burning fat, maybe, but that's not what the "3 minutes a week" style regime would be doing.

    Or, to put it another way - let's imagine that you could burn as many calories in 10 minutes of HIT as the alternative modest 5 hours of bike riding. Say 2500kcal of fat burn. (30 minutes each way to work?)

    1kcal is the energy required to heat 1 litre of water by 1C. So approximating my body to 80kg of water, every 80kcal burned would raise my core temperature by 1C (sweaty!). Burning 2500kcal would heat my body by 31C - over 3C per minute of HIT.

    According to Google, maximum sweat rate is around 50ml / minute, and each ml of sweat gets rid of 0.58kcal of heat. The maximum heat loss being therefore around 25kcal/minute, it seems unlikely that HIT can possibly be generating over 10x the heat that your body can physically cope with.

    Loads of assumptions, but I guess another way to think about it is, HIT would be burning 10x as many calories as running a 5 minute mile. I'm not sure my heart could cope ;-)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  15. amir
    Member

    In the program, the focus was on changing insulin sensitivity (helps to avoid diabetes) and aerobic capacity (e.g. via V02 max). However apparently some people will not respond (at least wrt latter) and this is predictable from their genetics. Not completely sure about wider benefits, but it was noticeable that one of the experts was a wee bit tubby.

    The program also talked about the importance of burning fat around the organs - but of course most of us are completely unaware of this fat - the skin fat is more obvious.

    As I said above, the biggest take home message for me was that sitting around all day is not a good idea, even if you do good long bouts of exercise before and after work.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  16. ARobComp
    Member

    @Amir Agreed - I luckily work up 3 flights of stairs and have colleagues upstairs. I try and run up the stairs where I can.

    Does anyone do stretching and "clenching" during the day to try and exercise while at your desk?

    Would sitting on a balance ball help to keep your core functioning and help maintain your bloodflow?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  17. Uberuce
    Member

    I sometimes have a play around with my Captain of Crush, an absurdly named torsion gripper that's fairly stern.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  18. Kim
    Member

    It showed there is no need for Cat 6 racing to get to work, just ride in ordinary cloths, with a 30 second burst away from the lights, no need to work up a sweat, and you will stay healthy.

    Getting hot and sweaty are optional...

    Posted 12 years ago #

  19. steveo
    Member

    Errm if you do 30s of HIT you will end up sweaty, as Dave calculated above.

    "You canny change the laws of physics", even when you dressed in your normal clothes.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  20. Kim
    Member

    Steveo, did you watch the programme last night? The bit where he was on the exercise bike doing his 30 second sprint wearing a suit and didn't break sweat... Maybe Dave's calculations are wrong.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  21. steveo
    Member

    Didn't watch it, physics would suggest however that if you do 30s at an intensity that raises your heart rate and and burns energy at a rate to make any real effect it will increase your heat output, if that heat output is high enough you will sweat. That is biology.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  22. Baldcyclist
    Member

    I really enjoyed the programme, some thoughts below:

    Insulin sensitivity improved by exercise in just 2 weeks.

    20% of people will be 'non-responders' to exercise, at least in terms of VO2 max - what the programme didn't really highlight enough for me was that the subject still went for longer, and felt easier doing the VO2 max test. Surely demonstrates benefit in stamina? Although he didn't produce higher VO2, he sustained his maximum for longer!

    Body fat not necessarily bad, so long as viceral fat is low, and the fact that this starts to change quite soon after starting an exercise regime. I like this, I'm probably skinny on the inside, if not on the outside :)

    Other stuff as already noted by folk above...

    Edit.
    Oh, I also got caught out on my ahem *sums* by someone on Twitter who kindly pointed out it was only 20% of non responders, rather than the 85% that I appeared to have magic'ed from nowhere - @baldcyclist Just 3 minutes speed reading per week can dramatically improve your ability to extract relevant data from an article ;) - I thought that was quite funny, and appropriate!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  23. ruggtomcat
    Member

    @uberuce slow and fast twitch ratios can be changed, at least according to Timothy Ferriss.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  24. amir
    Member

    First site found calculating calories burnt:

    http://www.healthstatus.com/calculate/cbc

    Example for person weighing 169 lbs
    Calories burnt in 1 hour
    Sitting / resting 81
    Standing 91
    Driving 162
    Washing dishes 172
    Walking 2 mph 213
    Carrying an Infant 284
    Walking 3 mph 335
    Pilates Intermediate 395
    Walking 4 mph 395
    Bicycling / cycling 12-14 mph 669
    Bicycling / cycling 14-16 mph 811

    Posted 12 years ago #

  25. chdot
    Admin

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01cywtq/Horizon_20112012_The_Truth_About_Exercise

    Posted 12 years ago #

  26. chdot
    Admin

    "
    So the health advice varied between quite diverting and rather predictable, but as television it was like 40 minutes on a treadmill, which is to say dull. Essentially, Mosley could have done with transferring his exercise advice to his own programme-making. Longer isn’t necessarily better – he could have summarised the entire programme in three 20-second bursts, delivered three times. That way we wouldn’t have had to sit down for so long and watch it, all the while being quietly killed by our chairs and sofas.

    "

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9111729/Horizon-The-Truth-About-Exercise-BBC-Two-review.html

    Posted 12 years ago #

  27. cb
    Member

    "he could have summarised the entire programme in three 20-second bursts, delivered three times"

    That's true of most television IME.

    Although I guess the reviewer meant "condensed" rather than "summarised".

    Posted 12 years ago #

  28. amir
    Member

    Yes, 1 hour documentaries are often really very slow going.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  29. Baldcyclist
    Member

    The reviewer presumably must have fallen asleep by the time Mosley went back to get his results?

    "But he came back after one month of Hit and both his insulin sensitivity and his aerobic fitness were vastly improved. As these are two things that are likely to make you live longer, Hit, in his case, was a hit."

    This was clearly not the case with the results, his VO2 max result, and the gene test suggested he was a 'non-responder' to exercsie.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  30. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    I don't know anything about non-cycling fitness. But in a cycling context I'd say that 30 second maximal intervals are going to stress your anaerobic response. This is Chris Hoy style training, only necessary if you've done all the rest of the training required to get you to within 200 metres of the finish line (or you've a good team) from where your anaerobic kick will have a use. For most cycling you need long steady distance to which you might want to add muscular endurance intervals and then, if you are careful, leg power intervals to improve low cadence climbing.

    Posted 12 years ago #

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