As we get older it’s natural for us to slow down. Instead of bench pressing and squats, we gradually shift to long runs, and then, long walks. This isn’t bad, exercise is good whether it’s 30 minutes of weights or one hour of peacefully strolling through the park. The key is having your body move, idleness is the true enemy here.

That all being said, we are creatures in constant lookout for time-saving tips and productivity hacks. We don’t want to take one hour to do something that could be done in a fraction of the time. That’s inefficient. Exercise is the same—if you can get the benefits of a 45 minute workout in 60 seconds, wouldn’t you want in? That might be the case, as the New Times explores:

For many of us, the most pressing question about exercise is: How little can I get away with? The answer, according to a sophisticated new study of interval training, may be very, very little. In this new experiment, in fact, 60 seconds of strenuous exertion proved to be as successful at improving health and fitness as three-quarters of an hour of moderate exercise.

By the end of the study, published in PLOS One, the endurance group had ridden for 27 hours, while the interval group had ridden for six hours, with only 36 minutes of that time being strenuous.

But when the scientists retested the men’s aerobic fitness, muscles and blood-sugar control now, they found that the exercisers showed virtually identical gains, whether they had completed the long endurance workouts or the short, grueling intervals.

Interval training asks a lot of the body, but appears to lead to substantial gains. Check out the full article for more details.

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