Does The New One-Minute Workout Actually Work?

According to Martin Gibala, a kinesiology professor at McMaster University, the one-minute workout study is the perfect workout for people who want to get fit but have no time to do so.

They did a major study to determine if the one-minute workout they created actually works and achieves the same results as working out according to the public health guide, which is a guideline about how much exercise people should get.

What sparked this idea?

The idea of a one-minute workout was conceived from interval training and people having no time to exercise. Mr. Gibala stated, “We like to think of it as fitting exercise around your life instead of fitting your life around exercise,” meaning the goal of this study is a workout that is quick and gets results.

My question is: how can I actually get in shape from doing one minute of exercise? Technically, one minute of exercise isn’t even interval training, which leads to the next point: what is this one-minute workout that allows people to lose weight and gain muscle, or at least tone up, so quickly?

How to do the one-minute workout

The one-minute workout actually takes ten minutes. However, the name of this new workout, which has had its praises sung, still does not lie.

While the actual workout is just a minute long, it is an intense exercise that is done in three increments of twenty seconds each. You may be wondering why such a short exercise has been split, but—having tried this exercise personally—I think it’s an excellent idea.

This one minute is a minute from hell! You have to push yourself as hard as possible and then a lot harder. It’s an extremely intense workout that starts off with a warm up, followed by the hellish one minute, and ends with a cool down period.

This is where the additional nine minutes come into play. For the minute of extreme intensity, there is, surprisingly, no set workout or exercise; it can be anything you want to although a cardio exercise is recommended.

The results

The one-minute workout actually works! In conducting this study, three groups were used: Group A did the one-minute workout routine mentioned above three times a week; Group B did 150 minutes of exercise a week (they followed the public health guidelines) and Group C did absolutely nothing. The study was done over 12 weeks, and the results were astonishing.

Groups A and B had exactly the same results: everyone in these two groups had increased their fitness level by 19 percent. Through various tests and documentation, people in both groups were healthier externally and were also happier despite exercising for different periods of time.

These two groups also had the same improvement to insulin sensitivity, which means that their blood sugar stayed at a healthy level. Internally, their body function was better overall than prior to the study, and the last group, which was the control group, had no new results as they did no exercise.

The one-minute workout vs. 150 minutes a week

The one-minute exercise uses an extremely modified form of interval training; it also delivers on the ability to be incorporated into the everyday lives of extremely busy people. However, people are advised to 150 minutes of exercise per week; the problem is that people often don’t have time to do that.

When it comes down to it, the the one-minute workout and the 150 minutes a week workout have two big differences. The trade off between the two is intensity and duration. The one-minute workout requires less time, but significantly more intensity whereas the 150-minutes workout requires more time, but less intensity.

However, the mind blowing thing is that despite the time and intensity differences, the results of both workouts are them same. The one-minute workout has blown me away because something as small as one minute of intensity done three times a week gets the same results of one hundred and fifty minutes a week of exercise.

If lack of time is your excuse for not exercising daily, the one-minute workout is probably ideal for you. Not only is it quick, but it gets the same results as doing 150 minutes of exercise weekly. While the one-workout takes 10 minutes from start to end, it can be done while watching TV, on your lunch break or in the morning, before bed.

In all seriousness, this is a workout that can be fitted into everyone’s schedule no matter how busy they are. Feel free to share your thoughts on this new workout method!