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Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
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Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#52GASP, exercise is good!? No way. The hard part is finding time and having the motivation. Particularly the latter. There's constantly about 49 other things that feel like they need doing more than purposely exercising and wearing myself out even more than I'm already worn out.
> The hard part is finding time and having the motivation.
As I've said here several times: the best exercise is the one you'll stick with over the long haul.
Put another way: anything you'll still be doing in 2026 is better than anything else you'll quit before next Memorial Day.
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#53[dead]
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#54Tabata et al.[1] found in the mid-1990s that just 2-4 minutes of "high-intensity intermittent training may improve both anaerobic and aerobic energy supplying systems significantly." This was popularized as "Tabata training" 20+ years ago. I generally believe that brief bouts of exercise can be very beneficial, especially because they're easier to do consistently over the long-term vs. more time-consuming routines. F…
Nitpick: In Tabata's research, "high intensity" meant 170% of VO2max - definitely not easier to do consistently, even if you can voluntarily sustain 170% VO2max. Popular "HIIT" methodology is only loosely inspired by it, and the mechanisms for their merits would be largely unrelated to that of the original Tabata protocol's benefits (which was about demonstrating a way for elite athletes to push anaerobic capacity at…
Right. I once experimented with organizing my running workouts according to the original Tabata protocol, as closely as possible, for about six weeks[1]. I wasn't an elite athlete by any means, but I was a 21 year-old Army cadet in the top quartile of cadets in terms of fitness. I found that it's indeed difficult to strike a legitimate 100% effort, even when it's only for 20 seconds and only 5-10 times. My point is not that people should adopt the protocol as a sustainable, long-term routine; it's just that there's been evidence for a long time that short workouts can have disproportionate benefits in addition to being easier to program into day-to-day life.
[1] The results on my running performance, specifically over two miles, weren't clear, by the way. I wasn't running my best times when I started the experiment, nor at the end of it. But at least I didn't get worse despite averaging only six miles per week. I've done much better on 15-25 miles per week with a wider variety of speed work.
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#55the research metric I'm interested in is "if you exercise for 5 minutes, you should expect to live 1 minute longer" and I would look at that and say "so I lost 4 mins? no thanks" but if it ever comes out with a surplus, I'll turn on a dime (and turning on a dime for 5 minutes a day probably lowers blood pressure)
You need to consider quality of life too. Maybe you only gain one minute, but you'll age much better with a habit of exercise and stretching.
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#56How much more evidence do we need, that exercise is good and any amount is better than none?
Well, I personally do not. I was about to be put in blood pressure medication. Then I started a gym, with a trainer. I noticed that, after the exercise, blood pressure would immediately drop and stay low for a few hours. Over time, the amount of time it spent lower than average increased, and it got lower and lower. It crossed 24h. Now? I can go to the gym Mon/Wed/Fri and it will remain low at all times. I did stop f…
And it could skyrocket for example if you get into a stressful situation. And you wouldn't notice that you are over 180+. And one day you get a stroke and become paralyzed. Sure, do not take the medication. These exists since the 40s, there is nothing wrong with them.
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the caveat that I'm just a random non-expert on the internet who has nevertheless spent too much time reading scattered studies and scholarly opinion articles: We don't need "more" evidence exactly, but rather a better model of how the effects of exercise map to a given individual's physiology. Exercise is good overall, but it's also considerably overhyped due to a procession of weak and narrowly-applicable resu…
It seems a bit silly to me that in many circumstances it's just way more acceptable for exercise to be zero part of your life than the reverse, and that an argument needs to be made for geting more than even 30 mins worth of movement in a week. A culture of getting exercise by default seems like the way things should be, and the should be an affordance for those who can't rather than a luxurious escape from not havin…
I think you're right overall, but a lot of that is an unexamined reaction to a built environment designed for motor vehicles, rather than being designed for humans. In suburban America, it too often doesn't occur to people to walk even modest distances, and when they decide to try, the experience can be scary considering that they're likely to interact with inattentive truck/SUV drivers while crossing intersections. If I just crossed the major intersection on the way to work without being paranoid about vehicle traffic, I'd probably be wheelchair-bound by now.
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nitpick: In Tabata's research, "high intensity" meant 170% of VO2max - definitely not easier to do consistently, even if you can voluntarily sustain 170% VO2max. Popular "HIIT" methodology is only loosely inspired by it, and the mechanisms for their merits would be largely unrelated to that of the original Tabata protocol's benefits (which was about demonstrating a way for elite athletes to push anaerobic capacity at…
Right. I once experimented with organizing my running workouts according to the original Tabata protocol, as closely as possible, for about six weeks[1]. I wasn't an elite athlete by any means, but I was a 21 year-old Army cadet in the top quartile of cadets in terms of fitness. I found that it's indeed difficult to strike a legitimate 100% effort, even when it's only for 20 seconds and only 5-10 times. My point is n…
HIIT or Tabata must not be done day-to-day, everyday. With no recovery days, there will be no gains. A 21 year old is able to recover like crazy, a good 9 hours of sleep might be enough to mostly recover. For others it would not work well and would lead to over-training. In overtraining, the 100% efforts will be 90% efforts, impact the immune system, generally just not good all round.
For disproportionate benefits, one needs to define which benefits exactly. A max effort will burn a lot of calories quite quickly and potentially increase V02 max (which is highly correlated to overall longevity). Zone 2 training has become popular and has other benefits, notably increases 'fat max' threshold - which gives different benefits (specifically the ability to work harder for longer while still using fat as an energy source for the exercise).
> I found that it's indeed difficult to strike a legitimate 100% effort, even when it's only for 20 seconds and only 5-10 times.
This is essentially the point. At the end of Tabata, the last interval should be the last bit of energy you have in the tank. It should be entirely draining. Doing this routine daily will not allow recovery to then properly do the training well.
FWIW, I heard it paraphrased as this: the body has essentially too modes, hard & easy. When going hard, it only matters how hard you go, not how long. When going easy, it only matters how long you go for, not how hard. At the same time, zone 2 training and HIIT/Tabata are not mutually exclusive in their benefits, but it's more which systems receive the most benefit while other systems in the body receive benefits but to a lesser degree.
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#59GASP, exercise is good!? No way. The hard part is finding time and having the motivation. Particularly the latter. There's constantly about 49 other things that feel like they need doing more than purposely exercising and wearing myself out even more than I'm already worn out.
The greatest misconception about exercise is this "if you're tired your best course of action would be to abstain from the thing that will make you more tired" train of thought. Exercise doesn't always work like this. Yes you'll have bad days, but you'll find yourself more energised most of the time and mentally more at peace. Thinking it will make you more tired can often be just a preconception. It's like that clas…
> best thing to do is start resistance training.
Doing so very carefully!
I will agree though. Before going on a long cross-state bike trip, I had some back issues and was cramming in work (too much sitting). I went out with lower back pain, resolved itself after a few days of riding for most of the day.
I very much agree that counter-intuitive behavior is often what is called for. The exercise or sedentary habits are habits. They really become normal one way or the other quite quickly.
Re: Five minutes of exercise a day could lower blood pressure
#60GASP, exercise is good!? No way. The hard part is finding time and having the motivation. Particularly the latter. There's constantly about 49 other things that feel like they need doing more than purposely exercising and wearing myself out even more than I'm already worn out.
> The hard part is finding time and having the motivation. As I've said here several times: the best exercise is the one you'll stick with over the long haul. Put another way: anything you'll still be doing in 2026 is better than anything else you'll quit before next Memorial Day.
Agree. Anything that is done over the course of one week or one month is pretty meaningless. When starting training, the only thing a person needs to do is to do anything. Just get out there, build consistency. That is the very first goal. Timings, intervals, HR monitor, those are all well past the point of consistency. The other side of the coin, the accumulation of training/activity over long time is what matters. Those that work on larger projects learn this, some things you can't just cram the night before. It requires hundreds of hours of sedentary or active living, hundreds of meals, for effects of a good or a bad diet (or active/sedentary lifestyle) to be realized.