Freakonomics Radio - 150. What’s the “Best” Exercise?

Episode Date: January 2, 2014

Most people blame lack of time for being out of shape. So maybe the solution is to exercise more efficiently.

Hey, Freakonomics, I have a question for you. From WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything. Here's your host, Stephen Dupner. Hey, podcast listeners. We love it when you send us your questions like, hey, Freakonomics, what's the best way to do this or that? Or, hey, Freakonomics, what's the story with such and such? Some of you are so smart, I'm not even sure you're real. Hey, Freakonomics, what's the story with such and such? Some of you are so smart, I'm not even sure you're real. Hey, Freakonomics.

This is Jasmine. All right. Hey, Jasmine. What would you like to know today? I want to know what is the best, most efficient form of exercise. I want to get the most benefit for the least amount of time invested. I don't have that much money either. Also, I am kind of lazy.

Thanks, Freakonomics. All right, Jasmine, let's see if we can answer your question. The best, most efficient form of exercise. But let's start by examining the premise. Maybe you don't even need to exercise. Is exercise really as worthwhile as we think? So we put this question to David Meltzer. He's our kind of guy. He's a doctor and an economist at the University of Chicago. I think there's a lot of good evidence, both observational as well as experimental, that exercise really helps. The numbers I often cite are that even something as simple as walking for half an hour a day, five days a week,

raises your life expectancy by a year and a half. And exercising more intensively than that on a daily basis can produce gains that are double that. No offense, Freakonomics, but I could have told you that exercise is good for me. All right. I just want to make sure you're not wasting what little time you have. So as it turns out, Jasmine, your situation is pretty typical. Here's Gretchen Reynolds. She writes the Phys Ed column for The New York Times. The most common reason that people give for not exercising is that they don't have time. And here's what that means. Most Americans are not exercising. The best statistics suggest that at least 80% of Americans are not meeting the most commonly used guidelines for exercise, which are those from the American College of

Sports Medicine. And they suggest 30 minutes of moderate exercise most days of the week. The vast majority of Americans are not doing that. Oh, now I don't feel quite so bad. All right. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to exercise. So we took your question, what is the most efficient form of exercise? And we asked some people that we thought could answer it. Here's one of them.

The right way to think about this is it's the wrong question. And, you know, if I've learned anything in my life, whenever I ask the wrong question, it almost guarantees I will not find the right answer. Ew, what a meanie. Who's this guy? His name is Peter Attia. He's an M.D. and a nutrition expert and a fitness fanatic himself. Emphasis on the fanatic. Part of his exercise routine is flipping a tractor tire.

It's a pretty heavy tire. It's about 450 pounds. You're never actually lifting the entire thing at once because you're flipping it. I have a goal that I'm working really hard, mostly for fun, to get to, which is to break 16 seconds on six flips of that tire. And here's why Dr. Atiyah thinks that this question, what is the most efficient form of exercise, is the wrong question. If someone says to me, because I get asked this question all the time, what's the least I can do for the most?

I really ask the person, what is it you want? What's your desired outcome? And it can be anything from, you know, I want to run my first marathon in six months, or I want to compete in a triathlon and it'll be my very first one, or I want to take my game to the highest level because I've already been doing this for a while, but I want to get a little bit better. It can also be something like I want to look better in a bathing suit, or I want to not get tired when I play with my kids. Those are all actually really elaborate physical activities. Okay, so Jasmine, what is your exercise goal? Do you want to compete in the triathlon? Want to just look better in a bathing suit? Oh, I already look very good in a bathing suit.

This is mostly for my heart, for my longevity. Well, if you're thinking longevity, there's one exercise that Gretchen Reynolds really likes, the squat. The squat will use almost all of the biggest muscles in your body, those in your upper legs, your back, your core, those are also the muscles that you need to do things like get up out of a chair, which may sound facetious, but in fact, as you age, one of the best indicators of whether you will be independent well into your twilight years

is if you can get up out of a chair and if you can go up and downstairs. That sounds pretty good, but how am I supposed to know what exercises do the most good? Okay, so let's talk about how exercise is actually measured. Here's David Meltzer again. So the technical answer is exercise is probably best measured in terms of the total number of calories that you burn. And therefore, the efficiency of exercise in terms of calories burned per unit of time is commonly measured in something called the metabolic equivalent score or METS. And they rank all the exercises that you could imagine doing from the most intensive to the least intensive. And the scale starts at one and one is basically rest. And in the sort of standard scales I've seen, the things that are right up at the top are basically running,

soccer, which presumably means, you know, running all the time, I guess, unless you're the goalie. And then it works its way down. So things like running are a 10. Jogging is a 7. Golf is a 4.5. Then rest is a 1. But it's interesting because there are also some activities on the list that are things that you might have to do anyway, like yard work. And that's a 6.

Ew, I don't really like yard work. Is there anything else like that on his list? That is a five or a six on the Met scale. Well, square dancing is pretty good. And here I'll quote from a list put out by the Centers for Disease Control. Playing guitar or drums in a rock band or fishing while walking along a riverbank. Any of that sound good? I am not into fishing. Sorry? I am not into fishing.

Sorry? I am not into fishing. All right, let's see what else. Clogging is good. Jumping jacks. Digging ditches. Yeah, let me think those over. Fair enough.

When we come back, I will tell you about a really fast way to get in your daily exercise. With the ROM, there's Freakonomics Radio. Here's your host, Stephen Dubner. Hey, Jasmine, you still there? I am still here. And you're still looking for the most efficient form of exercise? I am. Okay, so you could try an exercise commitment device like joining a gym.

Problem is, research shows that people who buy an annual gym membership overestimate how much they'll use it by about 70%. What a waste of money. Agreed. Now, there's another kind of commitment device, an app called GymPact, where you sign up for a certain amount of exercise. And if you don't follow through, you have to pay them. I don't like that one bit. All right, Jasmine, I hear you. So you want the best, most efficient, most cost-effective exercise you can find.

Based on what our three wise guests have figured out over time, let me offer you a little checklist. We'll call it the three I's, okay? The first I, intensity. Here's Gretchen Reynolds again. And that means simply that you go very, very hard for a brief period of time, and usually that you then have a short break, and you go very, very hard again. There are a number of studies that have looked at different forms of high-intensity interval training and have found that, for instance, you can do one minute of, say, hard bicycling and one minute of much easier bicycling. And if you do 10 of

those intervals, you get essentially the same physiological changes within your body as if you do about 90 minutes or two hours even of more common endurance training where you just go ride. And it seems very clear that these intense bouts of exercise can improve your fitness and also improve your health just as much as much longer bouts. But they have to be hard. They have to hurt. Jasmine, are you ready for the pain? Maybe. Maybe not.

What is the second eye in your checklist of three eyes? Individualization. Here's Peter Attia again. He's the tractor tire flipping doctor nutritionist. Kind of means using yourself as a guinea pig. You know, there's a lot of questions that I think we wish science would answer, but sometimes they're either not deemed a high enough priority in the scientific community or the scientific experiments that are carried out are done on such a heterogeneous population

that you can't necessarily extrapolate for yourself. And so one of the other things I do when I work with people is we really sort of embrace this concept of self-experimentation. Because at the end of the day, if I was working with you, it's really not that important what works for the population. It's really more important what works for you personally. Okay. He doesn't sound so mean anymore. Agreed. And that leads us to the last I on the exercise checklist. If the first two are intensity and individualization, the third one is I like to do it. Peter Attia, Gretchen Reynolds, David Meltzer, they all agree that the best exercise is whichever one you'll actually do. Whatever you will do is certainly the best exercise.

Well, what do you actually like doing? Do something that you actually enjoy. Do something that makes you better. So what do you say, Jasmine? Does that give you any ideas? I do have something in mind, but I would rather not say. Okay, no problem. But if whatever you are thinking about doing doesn't work out,

we've got one more option for you. David Meltzer told us about the ROM workout machine from a company called Quick Gym. The best exercise machine is the one you'll actually use. And the one that gives you a total body workout in only four minutes is the one you'll use every day. So you sound to me like the kind of person who could really warm up to this machine, Jasmine. But let me warn you, it costs more than $14,000. Ouch. Is it worth it? Well, it depends who you ask. Here's how David Meltzer sees it.

Now remember, when he's not busy being a doctor, he's being an economist. Yeah, well, I guess the economic logic of it is that it doesn't require very much time at all to get a full day's workout. So presumably if, you know, it took an hour to get a comparable workout and it only takes you four minutes, it saved you 56 minutes. So presumably, you know, that's worth your hourly wage, you know, five times a week over a year. You can price that out and amortize it. And, you know, that's probably worth quite a lot of money. Maybe you'll even get a new sponsor for the show. With the ROM, there's no time to get bored.

By the time you think of an excuse, four minutes is up and you're getting on with your day. Hey, Freakonomics, that's pretty neat. Thank you for your help. Hey, thanks for the question, that's pretty neat. Thank you for your help. Hey, thanks for the question, Jasmine. And I look forward to your next one. Hey, podcast listeners, coming up on the next Freakonomics Radio, Steve Levitt and I answer your questions, like what would happen if you put cameras in the classroom? I'll tell you, it's a different idea. I like it because there's so many ideas about what to do about public education, and this is not one that I've heard before.

And, well, what do you think Levitt's talking about right here. Oh, man, it's been a long time. I think it's been, it's been at least probably close to 20 years. It's another installment of Frequently Asked Questions. That's next time on Freakonomics Radio. Freakonomics Radio is produced by WNYC and Dubner Productions. Our staff includes David Herman, Greg Rosalski, Greta Cohn, Beret Lam, Susie Lechtenberg, and Chris Bannon. Special thanks to Kepstral, whose software provided us with the voice of Jasmine. And thanks to our listener, Scott Hechinger, whose question inspired this episode. If you want more Freakonomics Radio, you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

or go to Freakonomics.com, where you'll find lots of radio, a blog, the books, and more. Oh, we're done? That was easy. Thank you. Thanks, Stephen. You are the bomb. Oh, and you are the fuse. Do you like absinthe, Jasmine? Let's get wasted.