Dear Subscriber: 

Most of what you read about exercise tells you how many hours you need to work out each week to stay fit. Some say 3 ½ hours a week. Others say an hour, 5 times a week. The truth is the hours you spend exercising have little to do with the benefits. The kind of exercise you do and how hard you do determine most of the healthy responses you want from exercise.1

And, contrary to what they suggest, doing any old exercise for hours won’t necessarily help you. In fact, it can hurt you.

Today, I’ll explain why the quality and intensity of the exercise you do is more important than the quantity.

* Cut Exercise in Half and Get Better Results *

To illustrate how conventional medicine confuses this issue consider a recent Harvard School of Public Health study. They report that those who worked out for less than 3 ½ hours per week increased their risk of early death by 55 percent. If you are also obese and sedentary, they increased their risk 142 percent.

This is a sobering study; clearly pointing out that a lack of exercise can have deadly consequences regardless of whether you’re thin or overweight but it doesn’t address how the intensity and duration of exercise affects the benefits. Yet researchers reported this as if they have proven a minimum time needed to exercise per week.2

What happens if you set up a study to address this issue?

Researchers at Laval University in Quebec divided men into two groups: long-duration and short-interval exercisers. They had the long-duration group cycle up to 45 minutes without interruption.  The short-interval group cycled in bursts of only 15-90 seconds, while resting in between.3

The long duration group burned twice as many calories, so you would assume they would burn more fat. However, when the researchers recorded their body composition measurements, the interval group showed that they lost more fat. In fact, the interval group lost nine times more fat than the endurance group for every calorie burned.

Hundreds of my patients at the Center for Health and Wellness have burned fat and built functional strength by exercising more intensely for shorter durations. Lower body fat has been associated with decreased incidence of diseases and greater health and longevity in many studies.

* Make Your Exercise Better, Faster *

As part of my PACETM program, I ask patients to apply the following formula to their favorite exercise programs.

• Start with a 2-minute warm up at a gentle pace.
• Accelerate to a moderate pace (an intensity of 5 on a 10-point scale) for 1 minute.
• Recover for 1 minute by working at an easy pace (an intensity of 3 on a 10-point scale). 
• Repeat this alternating cycle of high-and low-intensity several more times. Gradually increase your intensity during the high-intensity portions of the workout to an intensity of 6, then 7, then 8. 
• Throughout the workout, remind yourself to breathe deeply. Focus on powerfully exhaling all of your air. As you inhale, feel your body expanding the oxygen-delivering capacity of your heart and lungs.

If you’re not used to this kind of exercise, you’ll want to start at a slower PACE TM as outlined in chapter 7 of my book The Doctor’s Heart Cure.4

If you don’t yet have the book, you can order it on this website.

Important accomplishments start with planning. Take five minutes at the end of every day to plan your exercises for the next day. Consider your plan a self-coaching tool. Setting a daily goal will help provide direction and continued progress in your exercise.

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears MD

1 Exercise Enhan

cement and Risk Precautions; Life Extension Update, Jan. 27, 2005

2 Emery, Gene; Exercise Not Enough to Offset Obesity Health Risks; Reuters, Dec. 22, 2004

3Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, et al. “Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism,” Metabolism 1994(7); 43: 814-818

4Sears, A; The Doctor’s Heart Cure; Dragon Door Publications: Minnesota, 2004