Are PE lessons worth it?

By Davina Chao

Hands up all the people who have ever skipped sport. Hands up all the people who have ever forgotten their gym kit. Hands up all the people who have had a headache five minutes before or into the PE lesson. Now hands up all the people who regret it, or have at some point, usually in front of their form tutor or head of year. Aaaand I count... well you can see for yourself, Im sure. Well. I have good news and bad. The good news is that the sport you do once a week in enforced lacrosse, netball or gym lessons is, in fact, USELESS. And before the PE department chase me with lacrosse sticks, dont look at me, look at an episode of BBC programme Horizon The Truth About Exercise, presented by medical journalist Dr. Michael Mosley. Once a week jogging does nothing for your aerobic fitness either, except assuage the tiny, tiny part of your brain that goes I must get fit before Summer! before being quickly squashed by hunger/greed. However, I did say there was bad news. Which is that what is good for you takes more effort, but, admittedly less time. The programme is called HIIT, thats High Intensity Interval Training and can be done on a standard exercise bike, the concept of which I never entirely understood because if you put in that much effort into cycling, you might as well be going somewhere. But I digress. Here are the steps: 1. Have a clock or stopwatch with you. 2. Reluctantly get on the bike and warm up gently for 2 minutes. 3. Then cycle as fast as you can, as if youre escaping from the teacher of the subject you forgot to hand your homework in to, for 20 seconds. 4. Catch your breath for 20 seconds, while continuing to peddle gently. 5. Cycle as hard as you can again, for twenty seconds. 6. Gently peddle for 20 seconds. 7. Cycle hard for 20 seconds. And thats it, except you do it three times a week. But thats it. By the end of the week, you would have done a total of 3 minutes hard work and around 6 minutes of leisurely cycling. If you dont like cycling, you can do the same type of thing on a treadmill. The theory is that those intense 20 second bursts deplete glycogen stores in your muscles, forcing your body to draw its energy from elsewhere, improving glucose uptake in the muscle cells. It also releases hormones that help break down fat hours after HIT is done. And if you follow the programme with some commitment for four weeks, research shows significant improvement in insulin sensitivity, which is how fast and well your system can regulate your blood sugar levels and in aerobic fitness. Dr. Mosley was equally sceptical about all this, but his father had died from complications from diabetes, and he wanted to see if this could prevent development of Type II diabetes. And there were, with a 24% improvement in insulin sensitivity. Sadly

Moseleys aerobic fitness did not actually improve because he is classified as a nonresponder. A combination of genes hold him back from achieving fitness nirvana. About 20% of people are non-responders. I dont suppose the PE department will accept that you fall into the 20%.