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Comment by cwilson | Hacker News Reader

Again, the only people 7 minutes of essentially cardio is going to benefit are people who are insanely out of shape. The second you're just in "ok" shape is the second 7 minutes is basically worthless to to you.

I really hate that this 7 minute workout thing is becoming a trend. It's misleading in its benefits. If everyone writing or talking about it wants to clarify and say it's only beneficial for people who are dangerously out of shape, fine, but otherwise it's stupid. Workout for 30 minutes. Please.

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Well, I'm extremely out of shape, and I don't make time for workouts in my schedule.

However, my resistante is to get started ("boot time"), once I'm dressed for a workout (that is, not in a suit or jeans), 7 minutes or 14 or even maybe 30 is not that much of a difference.

Point taken. Why 30min though ? it's usually said that you'd need 45min to reach the deep fat burning. (from little experience, my body really reacted differently after 40minutes)

I just tossed out 30 because it's a nice number and seems reasonable. You are right however that 45 minutes is the standard. I think you'd actually see benefits from doing high intensity cardio for 30 minutes however. At the very least it's so much better than 7.

At the end of the day, if 7 minutes of cardio is all you can stand to do, you're screwed.

If you do Tabata sprints, they will kill you in 4 minutes. So it really depends on how intense you can go instead of the time it takes.

At the end of the day, if 7 minutes of cardio is all you can stand to do, you're screwed.

The patronising attitude isn't going to help anyone who has gotten that far out of shape.

Even if someone is sufficiently unfit that they can't do more than 7 minutes of cardio work in a session, they still have to start somewhere and build up. The alternative in most cases will be their fitness decaying even further.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of reasons people might be that unfit. Some will just be lazy. Others might be recovering from a serious injury or illness, and just being able to walk for five minutes to get to the shops unassisted is a big achievement.

People who are insanely out of shape might not even be able to do all of these exercises (particularly the tricep dip one).

I did the tricep dip fairly often (deep and slow) and saw no changes (except my hand burning). Weird.

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