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