The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
40 seconds to a more fit life?
by Katie Mikesell
Western Colorado University professor Lance Dalleck, Ph.D., was a guest on the popular biohacking podcast “Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey” recently, discussing the work that his team conducted through Western’s High Altitude Exercise Physiology program.
Their findings support research that high-intensity interval training can be as effective in promoting cardiovascular health as moderate-intensity exercise. Dalleck’s team found that participants who engaged in just 40 seconds of intense pedaling on the CAR.O.L FIT AI exercise bike had better overall health results than those in a traditional exercise program.
The American Council on Exercise (ACE) sponsored Dalleck’s team as they studied the effectiveness of the CAR.O.L FIT AI, an exercise bike that promises to deliver peak fitness in just 40 seconds. CAR.O.L stands for Cardiovascular Optimization Logic and the equipment utilizes artificial intelligence to personalize high-intensity interval training workouts through self-learning algorithms.
Dalleck’s eight-week study followed 16 men and 16 women. Half of the group participated in a standardized moderate-intensity continuous training program, working out for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. The other half initially used CAR.O.L for less than 10 minutes, two days a week. Toward the end of the study, this group used the CAR.O.L. bike four days a week.
At the end of the study, Dalleck’s team discovered that those in the CAR.O.L group saw more favorable results, including smaller waist circumferences. The study also revealed that those who used CAR.O.L had twice the VO2 max improvement, meaning that the amount of oxygen available to them during workouts nearly doubled.
“With a 20-second sprint, you’re increasing your energy demand above rest substantially,” Dalleck said in the podcast. “That’s a severe disruption to your homeostasis. And as a result of that, you’re putting in motion a variety of up-regulation of metabolic pathways that allow you to provide energy that will regenerate ATP so that you can keep sprinting for 20 seconds. And the research is pretty clear that we’ve identified that minimum time that turns on these pathways, 20 seconds, two bouts a day, and that’s sufficient.”
In a world where time is increasingly limited and physical health is paramount, these findings could have a substantial impact on the future of fitness.
“As you get older … responsibilities with kids and work responsibilities, your time is compromised,” Dalleck said. “We try to use research we have available, the instrumentation we have available, to combat that.”
