THREE-SECOND WORKOUT BOOSTS BICEPS!
Get great guns with just ONE MINUTE of exercise every month
EXERCISING just three seconds a day can lead to measurable improvement in arm strength, a new study suggests.
Though it may sound too good to be true, an international team of researchers says the mini training sessions — workouts where muscles were used to lift or pull something against resistance, like weights — appear to boost biceps!
Experts in Japan and Australia recruited 39 healthy volunteers for the study. The people were divided into three groups: the first raising a lever against resistance, the second holding a lever up as a weight dragged it down, and the third lowering a lever against resistance.
The test subjects performed the three-second activity five days a week, for four weeks, and were asked to forgo all other forms of upper body exercise.
According to the scientists, all participants showed improvement. But the group who had to lower the lever with resistance demonstrated a stunning 10 percent increase in arm strength — despite only exercising for a total of one minute for the entire month!
Sports scientist Ken Nosaka — one of the researchers, who’s a professor at Australia’s Edith Cowan University — explains, “Many people think you have to spend a lot of time exercising, but it’s not the case. Short, good-quality exercise can still be good for your body, and every muscle contraction counts.
“We haven’t investigated other muscles yet, but if we find the three-second rule also applies to other muscles, then you might be able to do a whole-body exercise in less than 30 seconds.”