HIIT Plus

In the latest Rundown, a cycling app moves into hardware, a wearable takes your blood pressure on the go and high intensity interval training is combined with time restricted eating.

The Rundown

Indoor Pedal. Cycling app Zwift has entered the hardware market with the new Zwift Hub, an indoor bike trainer that automatically adjusts resistance. It’s wireless, quiet and can be ordered with or without a pre-installed cassette. The Hub sells for $499 and is currently waitlisted.

Wearable BPM. Want more health stats than your smartwatch provides? The new Garmin Index BPM is a compact wearable that monitors systolic and diastolic blood pressure at home or on the go.

It features an integrated display that gives easy-to-read statistics right after they are taken and can be paired with the Garmin Connect app to keep all your health metrics in one place. Reports are kept over 7-day, 4-week and 1-year periods and can be exported as PDFs to share with your doctor.

HIIT Plus. Research has shown that both time-restricted eating (TRE) and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) improve cardio-metabolic health in people who are overweight and at risk of serious disease. But are these approaches more effective when combined? The results of a new randomized, controlled trial say yes.

The trial had four parts: HIIT alone, TRE alone, TRE and HIIT combined and a control group. Over 100 women participated, with 32 or 33 in each part and all of them had risk factors for cardio-metabolic disease like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

TRE was defined as having all daily calories in a 10-hour window. HIIT was defined as exercise done at 90% maximum heart rate for 35 minutes, three times a week. The exercise sessions were supervised by the researchers.

The trial lasted seven weeks and measures including blood pressure, body mass index, cholesterol, blood glucose and insulin levels were taken before and after the study.

The results revealed that the TRE and HIIT combined group improved their average long-term glycemic control compared to the control group.

This TRE+HIIT group also reduced their fat mass and visceral fat and increased their cardiorespiratory fitness compared with the TRE only and HIIT only groups.

Some limitations: The study was only seven weeks so longer-term investigations are needed and it took place during COVID-19 lockdowns, which impacted the participants’ lifestyles and could have influenced the results.

Replay

This week’s vintage moment in fitness culture is brought to you by the first-class gym facilities on board the ill-fated Titanic. Photo: Getty Images.