Squatting heavy once a week will make you stronger than almost everyone at almost everything, younger, healthier, leaner, smarter*, richer, prettier; takes about fifteen minutes. How does that compare to your current exercise regimen?
I was already persuaded by the evidence that strength / weight training is a more time efficient and effective route to overall fitness and health than extensive cardio but I’m not familiar with the specific arguments in favour of squats. The first link doesn’t seem to highlight squats specifically and I didn’t read the second yet (behind a required registration). Are you saying that heavy squats specifically are dramatically more effective than other approaches?
I haven’t had a regular exercise regimen for a while but I’m just starting to try and get back into strength training, mainly focused on body weight exercises as I don’t like gyms and I can do them easily at home.
Time shouldn’t be that much of an issue if you’re interested in functional improvements in your strength. I mean, if it’s functional, you should be doing it anyway—so just do it more or provide more resistance. For instance, you can put your car sit horizontal, then do situps when you get to traffic lights.
a mere 20 minutes a week of any physical activity, whether sports, walking, gardening or even housecleaning, the last not usually associated with bringing out the sunshine. The researchers found that more activity conferred more mental-health benefits and that “participation in vigorous sports activities” tended to be the “most beneficial for mental health.” But their overall conclusion was that being active for as little as 20 minutes a week is sufficient, if your specific goal is mental health.
In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect.
Squatting heavy once a week will make you stronger than almost everyone at almost everything, younger, healthier, leaner, smarter*, richer, prettier; takes about fifteen minutes. How does that compare to your current exercise regimen?
*http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0000465
**http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0197-4580/PIIS0197458005002745.pdf
I was already persuaded by the evidence that strength / weight training is a more time efficient and effective route to overall fitness and health than extensive cardio but I’m not familiar with the specific arguments in favour of squats. The first link doesn’t seem to highlight squats specifically and I didn’t read the second yet (behind a required registration). Are you saying that heavy squats specifically are dramatically more effective than other approaches?
I haven’t had a regular exercise regimen for a while but I’m just starting to try and get back into strength training, mainly focused on body weight exercises as I don’t like gyms and I can do them easily at home.
Time shouldn’t be that much of an issue if you’re interested in functional improvements in your strength. I mean, if it’s functional, you should be doing it anyway—so just do it more or provide more resistance. For instance, you can put your car sit horizontal, then do situps when you get to traffic lights.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/phys-ed-how-much-exercise-to-avoid-feeling-gloomy/
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/
this is very weird to read on this forum, but yes, it’s a good idea.
Your second link is broken, even for people access; worse, it doesn’t give the citation. I think that this (ungated, alt) is the study.