In 2013, Chris Jordan, MS, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, ACSM EP-C / APT, an elite exercise physiologist with experience in the training of armed forces and currently the director of exercise physiology at the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, a created simple bodyweight exercise. a routine that took the fitness world by storm right away. Called the ‘7-Minute Workout’, the routine app with variations of the routine – complete with videos of Jordan himself offering rigorous instruction and demonstrations – quickly became one of the most downloaded fitness programs on the market.
The 7-minute workout proclaims the benefits of a type of training that quickly became popular at the time: high-intensity interval training, or doing short bursts of intense exercise, divided by short periods of rest. Although the mechanics of HIIT were really nothing new – elite athletes have done several versions of them since the 1930s – the routine promised something incredible to busy working Americans: yes, you can fit faster – in less than ten minutes! —And you can do that in any basement or hotel room, only with the weight of your body, a wall, and maybe a chair. Jordan published the compelling findings of his research on the benefits of the 7-minute workout at the American College of Sports Medicine Health and Fitness Journal, and a phenomenon was born.
For anyone who has tried the 7-minute workout and may have found it too difficult to complete, Jordan has just released a newer and ‘softer’ variation of it: the standing 7-minute workout. The idea behind this new version, as Jordan explained The New York Times, is to make the 7-minute workout more accessible to as many people as possible, including ‘my older brother of the triathlete and my 82-year-old mother’.
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In this version, as the name suggests, he eliminates all the exercises that can hinder the person’s body by dropping it on the floor, including more difficult movements such as planks, push-ups and grunts. “Like the original workout, the standing workout includes exercises for cardio fitness, the lower body, the upper body and core muscles – in that order,” explains the Times. “Each exercise lasts only 30 seconds with only five seconds of rest in between. To get the most out of the workout, do each exercise at a relatively high intensity – about 7 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.”
You can watch a video of Jordan explaining and demonstrating the workout here.
If you doubt that you can burn fat by exercising in such a short time, Jordan has enough science to support him. “As for the immediate health benefits of this type of intensive exercise, it’s about blood sugar,” Timothy Church, Ph.D., a professor of preventive medicine at Louisiana State University, explained to Mansjoernaal. For example, if you jump or run sprints, your body can process your blood sugar immediately, which helps weight loss, and the tension on your muscles leads to greater conditioning. The benefits are simply exacerbated from there.
“As with other forms of exercise, it tightens your skeletal system as you grow muscle, which increases your bone density,” explains Mansjoernaal. “A lot of new research also shows that interval exercise triggers the release of macrophages and killer T cells, which boost the body’s immune function hours after your last withdrawal or withdrawal.”
As your fitness increases, you should know that you can perform these exercises for longer than 7 minutes – but we are not talking about hours. Ten, 15 or 20 minutes is enough exercise, as the church of LSU said Mansjoernaal. Think of all the weightlifters doing their sets, then simply walk around the gym and look at the clock while their heads move on the music. “Most people only do 15 to 20 minutes of hard work anyway,” he said.
For more good weight loss advice, make sure you are aware of the one workout that, according to science, drives 29 percent more fat loss.