7/30/2019 Are PE Lessons Worth It?
1/2
Are PE lessons worth it? By Davina Chao
Hands up all the people who have ever skipped sport. Hands up
all the people who haveever forgotten their gym kit. Hands up all
the people who have had a headache five
minutes before or into the PE lesson. Now hands up all the
people who regret it, or have
at some point, usually in front of their form tutor or head of
year. Aaaand I count... wellyou can see for yourself, Im sure.
Well. I have good news and bad.
The good news is that the sport you do once a week in enforced
lacrosse, netball or gym
lessons is, in fact, USELESS. And before the PE department chase
me with lacrosse
sticks, dont look at me, look at an episode of BBC programme
Horizon The TruthAbout Exercise, presented by medical journalist
Dr. Michael Mosley. Once a week
jogging does nothing for your aerobic fitness either, except
assuage the tiny, tiny part of
your brain that goes I must get fit before Summer! before being
quickly squashed by
hunger/greed.
However, I did say there was bad news. Which is that what is
good for you takes moreeffort, but, admittedly less time. The
programme is called HIIT, thats High Intensity
Interval Training and can be done on a standard exercise bike,
the concept of which I
never entirely understood because if you put in that much effort
into cycling, you mightas well be going somewhere. But I digress.
Here are the steps:
1. Have a clock or stopwatch with you.
2. Reluctantly get on the bike and warm up gently for 2
minutes.3. Then cycle as fast as you can, as if youre escaping from
the teacher of the subject
you forgot to hand your homework in to, for 20 seconds.4. Catch
your breath for 20 seconds, while continuing to peddle gently.5.
Cycle as hard as you can again, for twenty seconds.
6. Gently peddle for 20 seconds.
7. Cycle hard for 20 seconds.
And thats it, except you do it three times a week. But thats it.
By the end of the week,
you would have done a total of 3 minutes hard work and around 6
minutes of leisurely
cycling. If you dont like cycling, you can do the same type of
thing on a treadmill. Thetheory is that those intense 20 second
bursts deplete glycogen stores in your muscles,
forcing your body to draw its energy from elsewhere, improving
glucose uptake in the
muscle cells. It also releases hormones that help break down fat
hours after HIT is done.And if you follow the programme with some
commitment for four weeks, research shows
significant improvement in insulin sensitivity, which is how
fast and well your system
can regulate your blood sugar levels and in aerobic fitness.
Dr. Mosley was equally sceptical about all this, but his father
had died from
complications from diabetes, and he wanted to see if this could
prevent development of
Type II diabetes. And there were, with a 24% improvement in
insulin sensitivity. Sadly
