Intense exercise 'could be beneficial'

Published on 27-02-2010

Summary: Studies suggest that people will be able to handle interval training.

Children keen on sport might be inspired to try new activities involving interval training, which are intense exercise workouts originally developed for use by Olympic athletes.

According to Stuff, studies in recent times have proved the previous belief that this is too strenuous for regular exercise enthusiasts not to be steadfastly true, with experts seeing it as a cleverer way to get fit.

Jan Helgerud of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology said: "This is like finding a new pill that works twice as well … we should immediately throw out the old way of exercising."

She recommended that those interested in giving it a go consider doing four sessions that each last four minutes, allowing three minutes of recovery time between them, noting that people should find they are slightly out of breath but "shouldn't have the obvious feeling of exhaustion".

University of Cambridge scientists also recently found that exercise can help boost brainpower, with running generating hundreds of thousands of new brain cells over a period of a few days, the Guardian reported.

Posted by Clara Gasper

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