Can you get fit with 3 mins of exercise a week?

According to new research, a few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise. However, the amount of benefit you get may well depend on your genes.

It would seem that people respond to exercise in very different ways. In one international study 1,000 people were asked to exercise four hours a week for 20 weeks. Their aerobic fitness was measured before and after starting this regime and the results were striking. Although 15% of people made huge strides (so-called "super-responders"), 20% showed no real improvement at all ("non-responders")....i.e. the exercise they were doing was not making them any aerobically fitter.

However even for "non-responders", the high intensity training regime seems to improve insulin sensitivity by an average of 24% and prevent the onset of diabetes.

For more information, see this article on the BBC News website or watch the BBC science programme on BBC 2 tonight...Horizon: The Truth About Exercise on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2012