The Secret To Exercise: Research Shows It’s How Often You Do It, Not How Much

Everyone agrees that exercise is important, but is it better to get a lot of exercise a few times a week or a little a day?

So should you exercise longer than once a week or a little each day?

It’s a conundrum facing many health-conscious people, and a new study from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has a solution This recent study reveals that a little daily activity may well be the most beneficial approach, at least for muscle strength. Fortunately, it also means you don’t have to push yourself hard every day.

In a four-week training study conducted in collaboration with Niigata University and Nishi Kyushu University in Japan, three groups of participants each performed one arm resistance exercise while improvements in strength and resistance were measured and compared. the thickness of the muscles.

The workout involved doing “maximal voluntary eccentric biceps contractions” on a machine that measures the force of your muscles throughout each muscle contraction that you would in a gym. An eccentric contraction is when the muscle lengthens; in the case of a bicep curl, this would be similar to lowering a large dumbbell.

One group performed six contractions a day, five days a week (6×5 group), while the other performed all 30 contractions in one day, once a week (30×1 group). Both groups performed 30 contractions each week. Another group did just six contractions once a week.

After four weeks, the group that performed 30 contractions per day showed no improvement in muscle strength, although muscle thickness (a sign of increased muscle size) increased by 5.8%. Muscle strength and thickness did not change in the group that did six contractions once a week. However, the 6×5 group saw comparable gains in muscle thickness to the 30×1 group and substantial increases in muscle strength of more than 10%.

Frequency, not volume

Importantly, the increase in muscle strength of the 6×5 group was similar to the group in a previous study that performed only one maximal eccentric contraction of three seconds per day for five days per week for four weeks.

ECU Professor of Sport and Exercise Science Ken Nosaka said these studies continue to suggest that very manageable amounts of exercise performed regularly can have a real effect on people’s strength.

“People think you have to do a long resistance training session in the gym, but that’s not the case,” he said. “Simply lowering a heavy dumbbell slowly once or six times a day is enough.”

Prof Nosaka said that while the study required maximum effort from participants, early findings from current and ongoing research indicated that similar results could be achieved without the need for maximum effort.

“We only used the biceps curl exercise in this study, but we think this would be the case for other muscles as well, at least to some extent,” he said.

“Muscular strength is important for our health. This could help prevent a decline in muscle mass and strength with aging. The decrease in muscle mass is the cause of many chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, some types of cancer, dementia and musculoskeletal problems such as osteoporosis”.

Rest

It is not yet known precisely why the body responds better to resistance exercises with eccentric contractions in smaller doses rather than larger loads less frequently.

Professor Nosaka said it may relate to how often the brain is asked to make a muscle work in a particular way.

However, he stressed that it was also important to include rest in an exercise regimen.

“In this study, the 6×5 group had two days off per week,” he said.

“Muscular adaptations occur when we are resting; If someone could somehow train 24 hours a day, there would actually be no improvement.

“Muscles need rest to improve their strength and muscle mass, but it seems that muscles like to be stimulated more often.”

He also stressed that if someone couldn’t exercise for a period, it wasn’t worth trying to “compensate” with a longer session later on.

“If someone is sick and can’t exercise for a week, that’s fine, but it’s better to return to a regular exercise routine when they feel better,” he said.

Explanatory tip

Current Australian government guidelines already say that adults should aim to be active every day and get 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate physical activity a week.

Professor Nosaka said more emphasis needed to be placed on the importance of making exercise a daily activity, rather than reaching a goal of weekly minutes.

“If you only go to the gym once a week, it’s not as effective as doing a little exercise every day at home,” he said.

“This research, along with our previous study, suggests the importance of building up to a small amount of exercise a week and then spending hours exercising once a week.

“We need to know that every muscle contraction counts, and it’s how regularly you perform them that counts.”

Reference: “Greater Effects of Performing a Small Number of Eccentric Contractions Daily Than a Larger Number of Them Once a Week” by Riku Yoshida, Shigeru Sato, Kazuki Kasahara, Yuta Murakami, Fu Murakoshi, Kodai Aizawa, Ryoma Koizumi, Kazunori Nosaka and Masatoshi Nakamura, July 31, 2022, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sport.
DOI: 10.1111/sms.14220