FITNESS Five minutes exercise a day works

A little is better than none


Personal Trainer
Paul O'Brien

You hear it all the time. Fitness professionals, friends who have taken up exercise, in fact anyone who wants to give an opinion will be anxious to tell you – a little exercise is better than none at all.
It’s become a slogan, almost a last resort in trying to move people from an inactive, sedentary lifestyle to a more active one. The ‘little is better than none’ mantra has spawned a sub-industry within the broader world of fitness and exercise. These days we are promised ‘five-minute abs’; tools to ‘transform your body (and your life) in six weeks’; how to ‘get ripped with just eight-minutes exercise per day’. TV commercials and the internet laud the latest ‘revolutions’ in exercise equipment – all manner of bizarre-looking objects that swear to contain the magic pill at their beating heart.

Truth hurts
The truth hurts. The aforementioned has become big business for one simple reason – we all want the painless, quick-fix solution. Not many want, or are able, to live up to the evidence-based guidelines for physical activity. The most widely accepted of these are published and revised regularly by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), the American Heart Association (AHA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
All these organisations recommend that adults engage in a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity five days a week. This will lead to positive health gains and a reduction in key risk factors for a number of chronic conditions.
If your goal is to lose or even maintain weight loss, the recommendation is even tougher: up to one hour of moderate-intensity activity five days per week.
‘Moderate-intensity’ means activity at about 60 per cent of your maximum heart rate. This rules out counting general activities as part of your daily quotient, as they don’t generate a significant heart-rate response.

The good news
There is, thankfully, a shining light on the horizon. A Women’s Health Study of 45-year-old women in the US and Puerto Rico showed that as little as 60 minutes per week of walking lead to significant decrease in the risk factors for cardio-vascular disease. That’s less than 10-minutes walking a day! It’s hard to believe that so little exercise can have an effect. Studies are ongoing, but is seems that even a little exercise reliably reduces blood pressure and positively effects metabolism.
A further study tracked 72 employees taking part in the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s ‘Keep the Beat’ programme. The employees exercised 15-20 minutes a day for five days. Results showed significant improvement in several measures of fitness, as well as decreased CVD risk, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and improved blood circulation.
The most significant finding of these studies was that there was little difference in results (excluding weight loss and aerobic capacity) between subjects who did shorter bouts of exercise and those who exercised for 45-60 minutes daily.
This is very good news. If you are struggling to get an exercise programme off the ground, you’ll find it very comforting to know that as little as five minutes a day can really make a difference.
What the studies don’t mention is the cumulative psychological effect of partaking in five minutes activity per day. As well as improving your energy and vitality, you will also enjoy positive psychological effects, like better sleep, improved self-confidence and higher self-esteem.
As I wrote in a last week’s article, the key to incorporating exercise as part of healthy lifestyle is to make it a habit. Exercising for five minutes daily for 21 days is surely more achievable than going for 30 minutes daily. I bet once you’ve formed the habit, you’ll start adding more time to your fitness routine easily, surpassing yourself and your expectations.

Paul O’Brien is a Personal Trainer and Life Coach and runs his own fitness and coaching business in Westport. He is the founder of Bootcamp West, a fitness program running in Westport, Castlebar and Louisburgh. For information about fitness training, coaching, bootcamp programmes and new TRX classes, email Paul at paul@bootcampwest.com or call 086 1674515.