Interval Training

Measures to curtail COVID-19 outbreak have in many cases culminated in the closing of gym facilities or the cancellation of exercise classes. Despite the very challenging circumstances for everyone, your fitness doesn’t have to suffer the fallout. Interval training in many forms may be used as an excellent time-efficient method to boost your current fitness without the need of elaborate equipment or space. Interval training involves intermittent bouts of intense exercise interspersed with low intensity exercise or passive recovery. Interval training stimulates cardiorespiratory & metabolic adaptations even to a greater degree than higher volumes of moderate intensity continuous training. It may also serve as a potent strategy promoting mental health. An example of an interval session may be 8x 20 second sprints with equal or less rest in between. The exercise can be on your bike trainer, running up stairs, skipping, lunge jumps, mountain climbers, etc. Performance of high intensity aerobic training may lead to brief immunosuppression & increased risk for infection (Neiman & Wentz, 2019), however this state may only persist for a couple hours and the overall effects of exercise on the immune system far outweigh the transient vulnerability. In order to mitigate the temporary risk, besides reducing the physical load, may be avoiding exposure to environments with higher possibilities of contamination for a few hours after your training session. 

 In addition, cardiorespiratory fitness, metabolic health, mental health & immunological improvements achieved after regular interval training may contribute to improved overall health and reduce the adverse effects and risk of fatality due to the COVID-19 outbreak (Souza et al., 2020).