The New Science Behind Exercise
HIIPA - What is it?
Another acronym - but this is one you’ll want to remember. High-Intensity Incidental Physical Activity (HIIPA) is any activity throughout your day that gets your heart rate and breathing up enough to boost your fitness.
Activities such as washing your car, taking the stairs instead of the lift, carrying groceries, walking or riding to your next appointment, or house cleaning are already part of your daily routine, but are proving to be important assets to your fitness.
Regular physical activity a day is linked to a significant reduction in the risks of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancers, depression and anxiety. It benefits both the old (shielding against cognitive decline and dementia) and the young (encouraging early brain development).
Emmanuel Stamatakis, Professor of Physical Activity, Lifestyle and Population Health in the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre and School of Public Health, says HIIPA has “great promise for health”.
“There is a lot of research telling us that any type of HIIT [High-intensity interval training], irrespective of the duration and number of repetitions is one of the most effective ways to rapidly improve fitness and cardiovascular health and HIIPA works on the same idea,” continued Stamatakis.
In a paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Stamatakis and colleagues explain that once age, gender, and weight have been taken into account, many daily tasks can be classified as ‘high intensity’ physical activity; the kind of activity that gets you out of breath enough to boost your fitness.
The University of Sydney found that for the typical mid-aged Australian woman, activities like running and playing with children, walking uphill or riding home from work can all be classified as high intensity activity. This is because they expend over six times as much energy per minute than when at rest; the standard measure for high intensity activity.
The study revealed that participation in HIIPA for a total of 10 minutes for five or six days of the week fulfills two thirds (⅔) of the advised activity in The physical activity guidelines for Americans (JAMA 2018).
This type of activity is effective as it is not limited by factors such as lack of time, costs, equipment, lack of skills or poor fitness as structured forms of exercises are. Consequently, incidental activity is far more accessible to people of all fitness levels and can empower people to be physically active in their daily lives.
REFERENCES:
STAMATAKIS E, JOHNSON NA, POWELL L, ET AL. ‘SHORT AND SPORADIC BOUTS IN THE 2018 US PHYSICAL ACTIVITY GUIDELINES: IS HIGH-INTENSITY INCIDENTAL PHYSICAL ACTIVITY THE NEW HIIT?’ BRITISH JOURNAL OF SPORTS MEDICINE (2019);53:1137-1139.
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY. (2019). THE NEW EXERCISE TREND THAT’S MADE FOR EVERYONE. [ONLINE] AVAILABLE AT: HTTPS://SYDNEY.EDU.AU/NEWS-OPINION/NEWS/2019/02/21/THE-NEW-EXERCISE-TREND-THAT-S-MADE-FOR-EVERYONE.HTML [ACCESSED 2 DEC. 2019].
AUTHOR: ELLIE GRIFFIN
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