Exercise in exactly 4 minutes per day!
Who has seen this ad before in Discovery Magazine or in another location?
http://www.fastexercise.com/
Its an exercise machine which costs $14,615 and among other things claims to burns more calories in four minutes than from an hour on a treadmill. Here is their explanation:
TWO METHODS OF METABOLIZING CALORIES
There are two distinct methods to increase calorie consumption through exercise. The one method that is known by most people is to engage in long duration repetitive motion work. The other method is to increase muscle metabolism. A pound of muscle can metabolize an average of about 55 calories per 24 hours but it will not do that unless stimulated to do so. The muscles can be stimulated to metabolize by stretching them under resistance. The larger the range of motion of the exercise, the larger the amount of muscle cells stimulated. That is exactly what happens during Yoga orPilates exercise, stretching under resistance through long ranges of motion. People who practice yoga on a regular basis will always be lean. If you find a fat person who professes to do yoga on a regular basis, you found a liar who is talking yoga and who does not practice it. Most yoga practitioners are also vegetarians, but that is not the reason why they are lean. There are many fat vegetarians, but those fat vegetarians do not practice yoga. Practicing yoga orPilates requires many hours per week and therefore it is as impractical for the average public as 30 to 90 minute exercise routines. The ROM is the 4 minute solution to stretch all your muscles through long ranges of motion and in addition it increases muscle strength and it yields significantcardio benefits. Below is a comparison of calories burned during and after exercise from a 60 minute treadmill workout and from a 4 minute ROM workout:
BURNING CALORIES ON A TREADMILL
1. A 180 pound person burns about 415 calories during a typical treadmill workout of 60 minutes. They burn 350 calories during the 60 minutes on the treadmill (walking at 3 to 4 miles per hour). During the treadmill workout you use 25% of the body’s muscles and you use them through only 15% of their range of motion. This means that only 15% of 25% or only 3.75% of the body’s muscle cells are stretched and stimulated during the exercise. These 3.75% of muscle cells that have been stimulated during a treadmill workout provide for an additional 25 calories of metabolism during the 2 hours immediately after the treadmill workout and another 40 calories for the remainder of a 24 hour period. Total calories from 60 minutes walking on a treadmill then are 350 plus 25 plus 40 calories for a total of 415 calories burned as a result of 60 minutes of walking on a treadmill.
BURNING CALORIES WITH THE ROM
2. The same 180 pound person will burn 465 calories as a result of 4 minutes on the ROM machine. How is it possible that more calories are burned as a result of 4 minutes on the ROM than from 60 minutes on a treadmill? During the 4 minutes on the ROM you use 55% of your muscles and you use them through an average of 80% of their range of motion (ROM stands for Range of Motion). The total percentage of muscle cells involved in the ROM exercise are 12 times as many as the 3.75% used on a treadmill because 80% of 55% of your muscles is 44% of all your muscle cells that are stimulated to an increased metabolism. During the 4 minute ROM workout the 180 pound person burns only 40 calories. But those 44% of the body’s muscle cells that have been stimulated to increased metabolism will burn another 150 calories in the 2 hours after the 4 minute ROM exercise and they will burn another 275 calories in the remaining time of a 24 hour period.
MORE TOTAL METABOLISM FROM THE ROM
Note: Because of the long duration 60 minutes on a treadmill those 3.75% of muscles are stimulated to about their maximum capacity to metabolize. During the much shorter 4 minute ROM workout the 44% of muscle cells that are stimulated to a higher metabolism are stimulated to only about 50% to 75% of their maximum ability to metabolize. But since about 12 times as many muscle cells are stimulated on the ROM, the total calories burned from the 4 minute ROM exercise is higher than from an average 60 minute treadmill workout.
YOU CAN GET THE SAME RESULTS WITH $200 OF EQUIPMENT
You can get the same health and fitness benefits from doing various kinds of exercise with equipment costing less than $200. The only difference between the ROM and other methods of exercise is TIME. The ROM workout costs 4 minutes at the end of which you get a score that tells you what shape you are in and the other methods of exercise that deliver the same benefits as from a ROM 4 minute workout cost from 45 to 90 minutes of time. The difference is also that only 8% of people have the discipline to do 45 to 90 minutes of exercise per day and with the ROM over 85% of people have the discipline to do the ROM 4 minute exercise. Believe it or not, there are still 10% to 15% of ROM owners that do not have the discipline to do 4 minutes of exercise per day. But many of these undisciplined ROM owners do the 4 minute ROM exercise when they start feeling particularly unhealthy and it is easy for them to get back on a 4 minute per day exercise.
Ok, has anybody used this machine before? Please send your thoughts…
I will tell you that I have used the machine, and WOW, is about all I could say. I am not in the best of shape, but I am no where near completely out of shape. I am a 38 year old man, 6′2″ tall and about 250 lbs. I am between a 36 and 38 inch waist and about a 50 jacket. I am probably carrying around 20-25 of fat on my frame that I need to drop.
I was on the machine just a week ago for the first time. I started my workout, pushing and pulling just as hard as I could. I truly felt that this was going to be an undertaking, so I closed my eyes and continued to push and pull just as hard as I could. I will say that the experience had me completely disconnected with my perception of time. I was breathing heavily and becoming exhausted, so I opened my eyes to look at the timer. I was pleasantly surprised for just a second as the timer read 2:46. Again, it was just for a second as it then went to 2:45. I had thought that I was most of the way through the workout, when I had barely passed the 1 minute mark. I did make it through the entire workout (yes, I realize that I used the word “entire” to describe a 4 minute workout). When I was done, I felt a bit light headed and a bit nauseous (because I did not think it was going to be this intense and ate about 20 minutes before starting) and wishing that I could throw up.
I had not started to sweat by the time that I was done, but certainly did on my drive home. My curiousity had taken me an hour from home, so I had a good hour to sweat on my way home.
Ultimately, it was a very hard workout because I gave it everything that I had. At the end of the session, I felt like there was 400 lb gorilla sitting on my chest, and after a full aerobic recovery, I felt energized later in the day.
I believe that this might be the perfect exercise for me, because I hate to do aerobic exercise and only hate anaerobic slightly less, but would choose pumping iron over running or anything to the like.
I plan on pulling my finances and getting one ASAP.
R. Blair Kincade
R. Blair Kincade,
Well congratulations.
Now I was speaking from the perspective of endurance athletes. This type of exercise is not appropriate for someone interested in any form of fitness whatsoever. It will however help you to develop some ‘type 2B’ muscles and that is just fine – good for those interested.
But if you want to be fit, then you would need to learn to love aerobic exercise and to salivate over the joys of anaerobic exercise – when it is appropriate to undertake the anaerobic part of training.
Now don’t pull anything and be ‘off’ for six months!! Then what would you do? Four minutes less of exercise?
The first thing you must understand is that there is no physical exercises that can reduce fat from a specific parts of the body. When you burn fat for energy, as during an aerobic activity, fat loss will occur systemically, i.e., from all over the body. But since fat distribution naturally varies from person to person, depending on inherited genetic factors, some people will tend to lose abdominal fat faster while others may lose fat at say hips or thighs faster. So do not compare your abdominal fat loss graph with others.