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I Dont Have Time For The Gym !!

The relationship between mindset, sport science and how this drives exercise behaviour

Date : 19/02/2020

Author Information

James

Uploaded by : James
Uploaded on : 19/02/2020
Subject : Psychology

Worryingly, Public Health England (2019), report 1 in 3 men (34%) and 1 in 2 women (42%) do not meet guidelines for keeping active. This is of concern because regular activity has been shown to reduce the risk of obesity, improve mood state, social functioning, reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, help sleep, reduce fatigue and stress among other psychological and physiological benefits (see, Loprinzi et al. 2016).

So it is vital you make time around your lifestyle to remain active. Now we know we have the obvious barriers of time, financial resources, knowledge of what exercise we should be doing, risk of injury which could mean we can t work, stigmatization from not being fit and entering the gym environment among others. Thankfully, exercise psychologists and exercise physiologists have been hard at work trying to research time efficient exercise strategies which can be implemented into every day life.

Research has looked at High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) training as a gold standard. However, this can often be time intensive because of recovery time and duration of activity and feasibility of fitting this into everyday life subsequently, Taylor et al. (2019) looked at something known as Sprint Interval Training as a time efficient strategy to fit into the working day.

According to Taylor et al. (2019), 4 sets of 30 seconds of sprinting on an exercise bike 3 days a week for 8 weeks is more effective than HIIT. Improvements were seen in participants weight, psychological wellbeing and other incidences of health. Therefore, SIT does show promise as a strategy the public could implement into the everyday routine to keep active, however, it would have to be done in an accessible form.

Luckily for you, other version of SIT are available. Cuddy et al. (2019) has recently demonstrated the a revised lower repetition version of SIT known as REHIT (reduced exertion high intensity interval training) has substantial benefits to cardio-metabolic health (i.e. respiratory function, blood pressure) and psychological functions/ mood state (see, Metcalfe et al., 2012, 2016 in Cuddy et al., 2019). REHIT unlike other forms of exercise is 2 times 20 second sprints with an interval in the middle.

Therefore, just 40 seconds of intense exercise a day has significant impacts for your physiological and psychological wellbeing. So whats your excuse ? Well, now you know, you don t have one !

Yes, you may be saying ahh well i don t have an exercise bike. Okay, i agree this is troublesome so we need to be inventive. Press ups in the morning, walking at a intense pace for 40 seconds a day, making sure we take the stairs instead of the lift, walking to the shops instead of taking the car round the corner. Just 40 seconds of your day and your on your way to leading a more active lifestyle.

So, are you able to add 40 seconds into your day ? Because, from reading this you know you should !

Sources for you:

Public Health (2019): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/physical-activity-applying-all-our-health/physical-activity-applying-all-our-health

Cuddy et al. (2019): https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/3/483

Loprinzi et al. (2016): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211335515001771

Metcalfe et al. (2012): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-011-2254-z

Metcalfe et al. (2016): https://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/apnm-2016-0253#.XhXMMkf7TIU

Taylor et al. (2019): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23794925.2019.1586497

This resource was uploaded by: James