Author: Dr. Martin Gibala
Book Link

On my way to picking up others book in the library, I came across this one in the Express section. It was carefully placed on the shelf to catch my eye as I walked by — its light blue and white colour beckoning me to pick it up.

“7 days to finish this Vito… that’s a cake-walk for you,” it said.

Intrigued, I picked it up and looked to see who the author was making this bold claim. As an academic at heart, I’m always skeptical of radical claims and people who throw around the phrase “based on science.”

Lo and behold, it’s an actual professor (and chair of kinesiology) at a Canadian University! Not just any University, but McMaster, which is starting to make a stand in the crowded world of Ontario campuses.

As a graduate of Queen’s University, the running joke is you can always tell when a McMaster student changed a light bulb because they’ll loudly proclaim they did it just as well as any Queen’s student.

He’s also speaking about High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), something I was vaguely familiar with after making a bet years ago with friends that I could finish the Insanity Beachbody program (which is kind of like a reverse HIIT – but on a stupid hard scale).

It was brutal, but the results were amazing and I actually liked it as I stuck with it. In fact, outside of my early martial arts training, it was one of the very few programs I stuck with

After reading Gibala’s work, I understood why.

This book boils down to is the following claim:

You can get the same, if not better, results from your workouts in a fraction of the time.

The secret, which Dr. Gibala has been researching for many years, is interval training. You go hard for small bursts of time, followed by cool-down sessions. When your body is about to give up and force you to the floor… the workout is done.

He gives you 12 different types of workouts to achieve this effect — all of which can be done in less than 30 minutes. A few of them last even less than five minutes.

The One-Minute claim from the book title refers to one of the suggested workouts where your sprints last only a minute, but they’re spaced out with periods of rest.

In case you were looking of an actual one-minute workout… not going to happen. However, even a minute sprint throughout the day still has its health benefits.

The book starts with the (actual) science behind his findings before moving on to the practical applications. If you’re not a person who is interested in why your body would respond so well to this type of training regiment, you can skip to the last part of the book.

What I appreciated most is he demonstrates how HIIT is for everyone from the beginner to the high-endurance athlete, showing this method is not just a flash in the pain type of discovery that only works in theory.

If you’re looking to up your exercise game, this book might be for you.

For the person looking to get rid of the excuse they don’t have enough time… or the proper equipment… or any other excuse that could be getting in the way of doing some actual exercise, this book will be helpful.

As for me, my worldview has been completely rocked.

I knew there was a reason I loved Insanity so much. Now I have several programs I can stick with for the long-term.