Does a 5 minute run do anything for you?

[BigToque]

Just wondering cause I went out for a run tonight, but after 5-6 minutes (of mid-speed running) I was totally dead. I can usually go for about 20-30 minutes at this pace, but tonight I had nothing.

I just turned around and walked back. Waste of time or what?

 

[mztykal]

No!

All it does it make you sweat.

 

[brtspears2]

yea...get me 5 minutes farther away from home.

 

[amnesiac]

Your body doesn't warm up enough to effectively burn calories/build muscle until you've done some cardio for at LEAST 5 minutes. So if you went and lifted or jogged or something then it wouldn't have been a total loss.

To really get your metabolism going when working out you should warm up for about 5-30 minutes.

 

[sohcrates]

you need to do aerobic exercise for at least 20 minutes per workout to get any real benefit from it. if you cannot hold your pace for more than 5 minutes, you should slow down until you can reach 20 minutes.

 

[CattyKathy]

no, it's better than nothing, for realz

 

[StageLeft]

Well, although people here are right that your body more efficiently uses fat if you've been excercising for a longer period of time you are still burning calories during that 5 minutes. Granted, you aren't burning many but you are burning calories and those are calories (whether from fat or carbs) that your body either has to replace from diet or by later burning up some fat/protein to make up the deficit.

Of course thats technical - in the end all you did was basically get yourself sweaty and 10 minutes walk from home

 

[riddelrp]

same thing happened to me this afternoon. I ate a BIG lunch. Went for a run about 4 hours later. Normally this would be fine, but I ate a ton. I had pasta. The entire box is 8 servings and I had about 3/4 of the box . I toped it with about 4-5 servings of Prego Sauce. I ran out about 10 minutes and felt like I was going to puke. I really am surprised that I didn't. I walked back. The entire fiasco took about 1/2 hour.

Man it was wierd. I am in fairly good shape, but just lost everything today. I have never had problems with eating too much before running and I ran Xcountry in HS. (I am only a year out of HS [19 yrs old]).

Ryan, man was the walk home embarrasing, I felt like crap since I couldn't finish what was suppossed to be a shorter run.

 

[crypticlogin]

It really depends on your conditioning and shape. I was watching the Discovery channel (I love this channel!) a few years back and one researcher wanted to find out when marathon runners hit their "metabolistic equilibrium", or some crazy term like that. Somehow they rigged up one of these Boston marathon regulars to these machines and 5 seconds into the run, he hit his peak rate.

So 5 minutes may be good enough, or not even close.