Can you improve your strength in the time it takes to count up to three?

Can resistance exercise for 3 seconds a day really increase muscle strength?

The question is Small new research Almost comical and easy weight training. In this study, men and women who contracted their arm muscles as strongly as possible for a total of 3 seconds a day increased biceps muscle strength by as much as 12% after one month.

Findings increase evidence that even the slightest amount of exercise-if intense enough-can help your health.I wrote about the unique way our muscles, heart, lungs and other parts of the body react 4 seconds of intense cyclingFor example, or 10 seconds of sprintingAnd how such ultra-short training evokes biological reactions and leads to better fitness.

However, almost all of this study focused on aerobic exercise, usually with interval training. In this training, intense and intense exercise is repeated and rest is scattered. Dive into much less research on whether super-easy weight training or a single blink-length session of intense resistance exercises builds strength or wastes precious seconds in our lives. Has been done.

So, a scientist led by Masatoshi for a new study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports in February. Nakamura and Niigata Niigata University of Health and Welfare, JapanWe asked 39 sedentary, but otherwise healthy college students to do weight training for 3 seconds each day. They also recruited an additional 10 students who would not exercise to work as a control group.

Volunteers exercising gathered in the lab on weekdays for some sort of strength testing and weightlifting. They were sitting in a machine called a constant velocity dynamometer. The machine is equipped with a long lever arm that can be pushed and pulled up and down with different levels of resistance, giving researchers precise control over people’s movements and efforts.

Concentric contraction

Volunteers operated the weighting lever with all their might to make the biceps brachii muscle as tense and contract as possible. Some participants slowly lifted the weight of the lever to curl the dumbbells, causing so-called concentric contractions. This means that your biceps will be shorter while you work. Other volunteers slowly lowered the lever, causing so-called eccentric contraction. Stretching your muscles, like lowering dumbbells during curling, causes eccentric contractions and tends to be more exhausting. The third group of volunteers was a type of contraction in which the muscles did not change length at all, fighting gravity and stabilizing the weight of the liver in the air.

Then, each of the participants exercised the biceps for a total of 3 seconds.

That was it. It was their entire daily training. They repeated this very short exercise routine once a day, five times a week for a month, with a total of 60 seconds of weight training. They did not exercise in any other way.

At the end of the month, the researchers retested the strength of everyone’s arms.

These 3-second sessions changed people’s biceps. The group that lifted or held the weight was 6-7 percent stronger. However, those with eccentric contractions, who lowered the lever to make it easier to remove the dumbbells from their shoulders, showed a considerable benefit. Their biceps were almost 12 percent stronger overall.

These improvements may sound subtle, but they say they are biologically meaningful, especially for people unfamiliar with weight training. Ken NosakaProfessor of Exercise and Sports Science, Joondalup, Edith Cowan University, Australia, Those who cooperated in the research. “Many people don’t have resistance training,” Dr. Nosaka said, starting with a very short workout may be an effective way for them to start a strength training regimen. “All muscle contractions are important,” he said, lifting near the maximum weight you can handle and assuming it lasts for at least 3 seconds, contributes to building strength.

Useful as temporary

Three seconds of training can also serve as a temporary measure to maintain or add to the strength of our arms that are buried in work and family appointments and unable to go to the gym.

According to Dr. Nosaka, exercise routines can be easily reproduced at home, so you don’t need a dynamometer. Just find a dumbbell that feels heavy. For example, if you’re new to weight training, you can start with the 10-point version. “Lift with both hands,” said Dr. Nosaka, starting to curl the biceps and then “lowering with one hand” for three seconds to complete a short, sharp, well-drained eccentric contraction.

However, there are some obvious limitations to this approach. Research volunteers became stronger, but they did not add muscle mass. “Strength is the only result of the resistance movement,” he said. Jonathan LittleProfessor of Health and Exercise Science, University of British Columbia KelownaI studied simple training, but was not involved in this experiment. More traditional weight training usually builds muscle. It has additional benefits in metabolism and other aspects of long-term health and wellness.

This study examined only the biceps of people. It is unclear whether other muscles, especially the leg muscles, will be strengthened after a few seconds of intense “lifting”. In a broader sense, framing exercise as something that should be omitted as soon as possible can make training look like just another chore and perhaps easier to skip.

Dr. Nosaka said he and his colleagues will study whether muscle mass and strength can be increased by repeating contractions for 3 seconds multiple times throughout the day. They are also looking for ways to translate this approach into legs and other muscles.

In the meantime, he said we should think that what we can do is probably to minimize 3 seconds of strength training every day. “It’s definitely better to contract once a day than nothing,” he said. – This article was originally The New York Times