Science-Based 7 Minute Exercise

We know, we know. We should exercise more. But who has the time to go to the gym?

American College of Sports Medicine's Health & Fitness journal just squashed that excuse with this: a set of 12 exercises with only body weight, a chair and a wall that takes only 7 minutes of your life. Best of all, it's all based on science, as Gretchen Reynolds of the New York Times' Well Blog summarized:

“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article. [...]
The exercises should be performed in rapid succession, allowing 30 seconds for each, while, throughout, the intensity hovers at about an 8 on a discomfort scale of 1 to 10, Mr. Jordan says. Those seven minutes should be, in a word, unpleasant. The upside is, after seven minutes, you’re done.

Link [the Scientific paper] - via The NY Times' Well Blog

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I see your point. We'll have to take that paper with a grain of salt.

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I agree with you that good science is done outside of academia. But a scientific paper does not open with an advertisement for a commercial enterprise, as this particular one does. There may be interesting and worthwhile information in this publication, but it doesn't meet the widely-agreed-upon criteria of a scientific publication. In the abstract, the authors claim no conflict of interest. If there was any functioning peer review, the advertising language in the introduction would not have made it to publication. The authors do have a very serious conflict of interest: they are overtly advertising the "Human Performance Institute, Division of Wellness and Prevention, Inc., in Orlando, FL" in florid prose (e.g., "From our work with elite performers, we have learned that managing energy is the key to sustaining high performance."). This is a trade publication, and that is fine. But to call such a thing science dilutes the meaning of the word.

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Oh no, don't discount the fact that the study is done outside the hallowed halls of academia as being unscientific a priori - there's plenty of good science being done in commercial entities (like biotech companies, for example).

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The extra minute is for seeing your life flash before your eyes.

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I was interested in the scientific paper itself, so I clicked. The paper begins: "At the Human Performance Institute, Division of Wellness and Prevention, Inc., in Orlando, FL, our clients are high-performing professionals from a variety of industries.". So, no, it is not a scientific paper.

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