Study finds that 1 minute of exercising really hard is the equivalent of 45 minutes of moderate exercise

While you were off on your 45-minute jog, scientists at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, were conducting a study about "interval training," which is what athletes call very brief but extremely draining bursts of exercise, such as sprints. According to the study's findings, the extra 44 minutes of your jog might have been entirely unnecessary — 60 seconds of strenuous exercise is apparently just as successful at boosting health and fitness as 45 minutes of a lighter workout.

This is extremely good news for anyone who has trouble fitting a 45-minute workout into their day, but bad news for anyone who was using the excuse of not having enough time to exercise to avoid putting on the running shoes. You now have literally no excuse.

That's because neither the lighter 45-minute workout nor the strenuous one-minute workout was found to be superior to the other, aside from the fact that one was much, much shorter. The overall results, measured in the three-month-long study, found that both endurance exercise and interval exercise have nearly identical improvements on one's fitness and health.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Still can't quite believe it? Read more about the interval training research at The New York Times.