Canadian researcher behind one-minute workout has a shorter option

<i>The reason this matters is that “lack of time” often crops up as an excuse when scientists try to figure out why so few of us get as much exercise as we know we should. Gibala and others have been whittling away at this excuse for more than a decade now, designing ever more time-efficient workouts.</i><p>The solution to the &quot;I don&#x27;t have enough time&quot; problem is not to make shorter and shorter workouts, but to encourage a cultural shift away from constant media distractions and pointless hyper-productivity posturing. No one is too busy to spend 30 minutes exercising 3 times a week.<p>Ditto for the obesity crisis - the solution isn&#x27;t to make less caloric foods, it&#x27;s to change the culture of excessive portion sizes and sedentary lifestyles.

This was initially as a response to wattengard. But I realized more people would benefit from this, so posting as a top comment.<p>I just wanted to post some options to workout from home. So it cuts down atleast on the time to drive out the gym and driving back. And if done in the morning also avoids the extra shower :)<p>Please note that other than having used these videos, I have no other affiliation to both these options. Both are free resources.<p>FitnessBlender[1] has &gt;500 workout videos. The best part is, these videos are tagged by their difficulty from level 1 to level 5. You can jump into any workout at any level. If it is overwhelming or underwhelming, you can adjust accordingly. At my weakest even a level 2 workout was killing. Then I had moved upto a level 4 or short level 5 workout. You can do all the exercises with a dumbbell or bodyweight. Lost nearly 20kg using this. Then I got careless and let slip. Now I am starting back at level 3. I used to make my own workout plan, putting together the workouts that I liked. They also have paid workout programs that makes all the planning much easier.<p>100Pushups.net[2] and its associated pullups, situps running etc. These are just text resources that give you a detailed plan on how to progress from a single pushup(or none) and slowly build up until you can ultimately do 100. (The tracking app was added later and I have not used it.) It is purely bodyweight. You do need a pullup bar. I tried it for a short period and started seeing results in a very short period. But somehow working out with the video was a lot more motivating and I pushed myself more, than working out alone following some plan on paper. So I went back to FitnessBlender again. Yet, I feel, if you are good at pushing yourself, then this would be a good option.<p>Other please, share at-home workouts that have worked for you.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fitnessblender.com&#x2F;videos" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fitnessblender.com&#x2F;videos</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.100pushups.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.100pushups.net&#x2F;</a>

It&#x27;s not a &#x27;lack of time&#x27; why people don&#x27;t exercise, they don&#x27;t make time to do it. I totally understand why: it&#x27;s so much easier and convenient to not do it, and for a very long time, you don&#x27;t notice it all that much if you don&#x27;t if you fail to do any exercise; it&#x27;s only afters a long time of being sedentary and then having to do something slightly intensive you notice that all your strength and stamina is gone.<p>It&#x27;s not lack of time; it&#x27;s that people do not actively feel how badly their bodies deteriorate when they do not exercise, since it goes so slowly, and they do not do any exercise, so they also never really find out until it has become a real problem. If people would feel how bad it was not to exercise, they would be much more accommodating in their immensely busy schedules and actually take time out of their day to do so.

My two cents on the &quot;enough time to work out&quot; topic: I work eight hours a day on grunt level marketing stuff, in an open office.<p>I used to do power lifting, but between this job, online programming classes, and trying to maintain a relationship with my wife, this dropped off.<p>Something that helped me immensely was just bringing a couple 25-pound dumbbells to work, leaving them by a pile of junk behind the building, and ducking out for a &quot;smoke break&quot; every 2 hours or so, during which I spend 5 intense minutes systematically annihilating every muscle group I can. The &quot;best&quot; workout is the one you can consistently do.<p>Pros: Takes maybe 20 minutes a day and I&#x27;m doing it on company time, but I don&#x27;t feel bad about it because I don&#x27;t smoke and it clears my mind to focus on more PPC drudgery.<p>Cons: None. Bring dumbbells to work tomorrow and hide them behind your junk pile.

The problem is, that even after a 1-minute workout, I need to take a shower and change my clothes if I want to stay 8+ more hours with other people.

Four years ago I went looking for the fastest way to cut down my weight and ended up comparing different modes of running on Wolfram Alpha. Turns out increasing the incline was the most effective at burning energy, almost 3X or 300% at 30° incline¹ which is bonkers.<p>I couldn&#x27;t mod my treadmill to get any significant amount of incline but quickly landed on the idea of using my staircase and thus began a 4 hour regimen (10:30 pm to 2:30 am) of running up and down 25 steps 120+ times. It was highly effective (96 kg to 83 kg) but I blew out my knees and right ankle after 4 months of this, forcing me to stop. It also was a problem when my neighbour&#x27;s wife kept peeking through their door to let me know they didn&#x27;t appreciate all that clacking at 1 in the morning.<p>4 years later I&#x27;m holding onto the same level I reached back then (84 kg) and I&#x27;d love to do it again and get it down by another 10 kg in an intense two-month sprint. But I get cold feet every time I think about it.<p>I&#x27;m taking Vit. C now to boost collagen so my joints should fare better the next time I try it. The lawyer and his wife have also moved out which is another annoyance taken care of. Whether I can resist the urge to push hard after seeing the results is the question.<p>¹<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;DAvovYA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;DAvovYA</a>

<i>His newest study finds that dashing up a staircase for just 20 seconds, repeated a few times a day, can measurably improve your fitness.</i><p>Well, but doing this “a few” times, let’s say 3x, results in... 1 min. Where’s the news?

Don&#x27;t remember where I heard it but once someone remarked that if President Obama could make time for an hour a day for exercise, then most people (which is to say, people not buried under their work or facing other difficult challenges) probably can come up with a better excuse than simply not having the time.

I wish this was a joke, but here we are. Luckily I have a better alternative for you; find a meaningful physical activity that you enjoy doing instead, and sit back and watch your priorities take care of the rest.<p>I have a wooden man [0] and a sand bag in my living room, which means the barrier to training is basically non-existing. And its a kind of training I enjoy, because it leads somewhere and strengthens the body in a non-artificial way. I&#x27;ll do five minutes here, ten there; with the occasional late night 2 hour session.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tSbUoSxee0I&amp;t=21s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=tSbUoSxee0I&amp;t=21s</a>

&gt; Still, the stair-climbing protocol isn’t just about time, he says. It should also “remind people that ‘exercise’ does not have to involve changing into spandex, going to the gym and making an hour time commitment.” The volunteers in the new study, he notes, didn’t don workout gear or shower afterwards; it was just a brief moment in their normal daily routine.<p>I completely agree to this one. Ritual of going to Gym becomes a big procrastion.

I think I might prefer the opinion of this other Canadian researcher: it&#x27;s way too hard to incorporate physical activity into your regular activities.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.plos.org&#x2F;obesitypanacea&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;23&#x2F;it-is-still-way-too-hard-to-be-physically-active&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.plos.org&#x2F;obesitypanacea&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;23&#x2F;it-is-still...</a>

I wonder if this is what a Minimum Viable Workout (MVW) would look like. I’m not trying to make my exercise life more efficient (I think time spent in the gym without a phone helps me disconnect), but because sometimes the effort barrier is too high for me and I fall into periods of inactivity. So I would find it appealing to maintain a baseline of fitness with a “no excuses” MVW.

I&#x27;ve often wondered if would help me to do an all-out 1K row right before bedtime, each day. I guess it would take 3:30 or so, maybe 3:00 if I really smash it.<p>The times I&#x27;ve done that I&#x27;ve felt extremely tired afterwards, and had to have a good long rest.

Lack of time because we must sit tweeting and posting selfies 7 hours a day. Everyone has 24 hours, if you cannot take 1 hour from that for arguably the most important thing for your health...