Age Wise

Just 3 Seconds of Intense Exercise Makes a Muscle Stronger

Brief but hard-core weightlifting yields surprising benefits when repeated daily

You won’t look like this after a single 3-second workout, but there is benefit to such brief, intense effort when added up over time. Photo: Unsplash / Damir Spanic

When university students did bicep curls or isometrics at maximum effort for just three seconds, five days a week for four weeks, their biceps grew 10% stronger compared to a control group that did no specific exercising. While that might not be Jack LaLane-level strengthening, it adds to a growing body of research suggesting that you don’t have to work out for hours and hours to gain fitness.

Such brief but intense workouts could be particularly beneficial in preventing sarcopenia, the decrease in muscle mass and strength that comes with aging, says study leader Ken Nosaka, PhD, director of exercise and sports science at Australia’s Edith Cowen University.

If we don’t work at building muscle, we naturally start losing muscle fiber around age 30, on average, and by age 70 some 40% of muscle mass can be gone.

The new study was small, however, involving just 52 young adults in Japan ( 39 did the exercises, 13 were in the control group). The test involved biceps only, so it remains to be seen if the effect is similar on other muscles. But the exercise group literally did just 3-second workouts in each…