The high-intensity interval training for metabolic resistance

The Best Exercise Type for Metabolic Resistance

by Tanya Zilberter, PhD

Until recently, in order to improve cholesterol profiles of people with metabolic syndrome, doctors usually advised a moderate-intensity exercise such as walking. Now, we have new information indicating that though it’s good enough for weight loss and blood pressure, it may be not enough to improve your cholesterol profile.

Researchers at Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim studied how exercise type influenced people with metabolic syndrome and showed that those who was on a high-intensity interval training program had significantly improved HDL-cholesterol levels. Their exercise consisted of four sets of 4-minute high intensity bouts at 90 percent of maximal heart rate (220 minus age) each followed by a 3-min active rest. These people exercised three times a week for 16 weeks.

The control group exercised continuously for 40 minutes at 70 percent of their maximal heart rate three times per week for 16 weeks. In both groups, participants improved their blood pressure and lost weight but only the interval training group showed improved HDL levels.

”When we retested the patients at the end of the 16-week study, of those who underwent the interval-training program, nearly half had trained themselves out of the metabolic syndrome, whereas just 37 percent of patients in the moderately trained group did so,” the principal researcher Dr Tjonna said. “While metabolic-syndrome patients could perform more intense exercise, clinicians are reluctant to prescribe it.”

"There is a understandable reluctance to encourage sedentary, overweight middle and older aged patients to exercise at that high a level of exercise because of a perceived greater risk of cardiac events and the likelihood of greater musculo-skeletal injuries.We almost always tell patients to begin with a walking program and go from there,” agreed Dr James Gaulte in his “Retired Doc’s Thoughts” blog.

The exercise routine described in the Norwegian study is rather tough but since the participants exercised under professional supervision, it’s been OK. It can be safer to start with a milder program and gradually increase the workload. Read more about it here.

So where does it leave you if you are not sure whether or not you can start an interval training program? Try this safe and simple fitness test. It can be done at home.

Don’t Forget About Strength Training!

Strength training is also as important: there are preliminary results of a long term clinical study conducted on 3,233 men, aged 20 to 80 years, which show that people with highest muscle strength had lowest risks of Metabolic Syndrome.

“Muscular strength was inversely associated with metabolic syndrome incidence, independent of age and body size,” the authors write in the article published by the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. “Potential benefits of greater muscular strength presumably through resistance exercise training should be considered in primary prevention of metabolic syndrome.”

Sources:

International Symposium on Atherosclerosis; June 21, 2006.
Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Nov. 30, 2005.