Ask HN: Is anyone successful with the 7-minute workout so far?

And beyond that, the 7 minute workout is mostly useless. Go to the gym and lift weights 3-4 times a week (and then lift heavier ones the next time, repeat). It's not complicated.

If you're looking for those things, get your heart pumping for longer than 15 minutes and work on a solid routine at a gym.

i started the 7 minute thing a few weeks ago. Since then, I've felt fitter and slightly happier. Without it, I'd still cycle to work but my upper body gets very little movement.

So, does doing some exercise make you feel better than doing next to none? In my case, definitely. Does it make you thinner and more attractive? No idea. Is the 7-minute workout the best approach? Probably not. Is it a waste of time? Hell no. Exercise is never a waste of time. And don't ever let any gym geek tell you otherwise.

you need to workout and lift weights if you want to get muscles

However, just as important, if not more important, is diet. When counting calories, exercise is no substitute for eating less. Whatever diet you end up using (I have my own strong opinions on that but I'll refrain from sharing those here) it is critical for health and well-being to stay within a healthy bodyfat range.

Also, one more thing about that thread. I mentioned leangains and starting strength. Starting strength is excellent for getting strong. Leangains isn't. Leangains is wonderful for getting thinner while retaining your strength. For building muscle, a modest caloric surplus seems to work just as well as, if not better than, intermittent fasting. I'm developing a website that explains more, which will hopefully be launching in the next month or two.

It was a good starting point. I've always been fit (soccer player & runner) but never did much weights so I found it a good motivator to do more than just run as my workout.

The 7-minute workout is better than nothing, but I wouldn't look at it as a go-to strategy.

I guess it really depends on your perspective. I've always worked out, so I enjoy it. But for some it's an inconvenience. It just like food between my wife and I. She likes food variety and it's an experience for her. I just eat so I don't die and can (and do) eat the same thing every day.

I also live in Vietnam and my diet, without much work, has improved quite a bit.

I'm not looking for muscle, just to get me back to not feeling like a fat piece of shit and to stop getting winded after sex. Just keeping it real.

I usually do 3 workouts a week. It consists of a 5 minute warmup followed by eight 1 minute sprints with 2 minute walk intervals and an 5 minute cooldown at the end: 5+(8*3)+5: 34 minutes total. As others have said there is no point in "hacking" your workouts. You can do away with optimizations like HIIT, but imho you still need around 1 hour of exercise every day to keep yourself healthy.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/04April/Pages/Is-exercise-to-bla...

Basically if you're going to do high intensity efforts, best get checked out with your doctor first, particularly if you're a bit stressed.

The rule is: no shower unless I've done some form of exercise. The 7-minute workout counts, so I'm doing one or two 30-minute runs a week, and the rest of the days are 7-min workouts.

Many comments in this thread are failing to address the question of exercise in a rational way. As I see it the relevant questions are:

* What are the incremental benefits of Alternative X (such as "lift weights 3-4 times a week")? Clearly there are benefits, but without a guess as to the magnitude of the benefit, one cannot rationally evaluate it vs the costs.

* Is there a superior alternative to Daily 7-Min that takes about the same time?

* How much better is a daily 7-min than doing nothing?

1. If you do this cold, you're going to increase your chance of injury. Warm up first! If you're already fairly active, injuries suck because they keep you from doing the things you love. If you're trying to get active, an injury just shuts you down before you get started!

2. Some of these exercises can cause injury if your form is poor. If you've done them all many times before and know you have good form then, by all means, warm up and then chain these together for a nice, short HIT workout. If you're not sure you have good form, slow down! Do not perform these at a discomfort level of 8 out of 10 if you haven't learned good form yet!

3. This is a nice workout that you can perform almost anywhere, but incorporates no weights. Unless you're really out of shape (and even if you are) weights are pretty much necessary to get good results.

4. Having just one workout that you do daily is both boring and incomplete.

Personally, I think this would be a great way to boost energy in the office or warm-up for a sport, but it's not something I would rely on as my complete workout regimen. People who are unfit and are looking for an easy fix should be very cautious of this workout due to it's injury potential. With that in mind, if you can avoid injury it's a lot better than doing nothing!

Disclaimer: I am not a physical trainer or any kind fitness professional.

People disagree about the tradeoffs between intensity and duration. I'm not an expert on that so my opinion isn't really helpful on that topic. However, I do see some potential problems with the seven minute workout. It's really hard to increase the intensity of several of the exercises. It's really hard to increase the intensity of wall sit, plank and side plank. Once your thighs are parallel to the floor the only way to increase wall sit intensity is to add weight. You can make planks harder by positioning your arms higher up but once again you'll hit a limit pretty fast.

This is probably a decent workout for a beginner but because it doesn't scale well with fitness level I don't see it staying effective. Having said that this is definitely better than nothing and the convenience makes it likely that a beginner will be willing to try it.

Reddit motto #1 - lawyer up and hit the gym.

Reddit motto #2 - Squats, bench, and dead lifts.

I always thought it was a running Reddit joke. However, after going to the gym for years and not seeing wow-type results, I gave #2 a try. After 3 months of it, I have to be honest and say that I'm pretty impressed with the results. I've lost a lot of fat and am far stronger and fitter. But 7 minutes? No. My normal sessions are around 2 hours. A podcast or two, and time flies.

My GF on the other hand used the 7 minute workout as her only exercise during our extended trip and gained strength and mobility. It definitely works.

The concept of "you don't need a gym membership or weights to get results" is very sound. My girlfriend is essentially a full-time acrobat (extremely fit, trains for 25+ hours a week), and she started me on a simple workout that takes 30-60 minutes, and goes in five week cycles of building up in reps. It's produce more results in a shorter period of time than any traditional gym workout.

I would never get very far with workouts because my back would flare up badly. In an effort to get back in shape and lose some weight I've been doing a 10 minute cardio workout 3-4 times a week.

It's helped tremendously and I've lost over 15 pounds. It's also prevented my back from really flaring up because I'm not over stressing it. I've even worked up to doing an additional 30-40 minute cardio workout once a week.

I'll never have the cardio I had years ago but I'm in much better shape than when I was doing nothing. It's also motivated me to start wearing my fitbit again and getting up and walking through my work campus once a day.

Yes it can help. What the naysayers don't realize is that many people are out of shape, have medical issues, etc. They also don't realize that even getting into a short rhythm of working out snowballs into other self-conscious health thoughts and activities.

I just bit the bullet and joined a gym. It's not that I'm lazy - I just get incredibly bored at the gym doing those reps. But I am doing 1 hour a day 6 days a week of hard workout with equipment.

Do yourself a favor and bite the same bullet: Join a gym and pump some iron.