HIIT @ WORK

No more "No time to exercise". Thanks to the HIIT @ WORK exercise programme for screen workers, you can get as much health benefit with 4 minutes of exercise as with 40min of jogging.

Onderzoeksthema: Gezond bewegen

Interessegebied: Education; Health and Care; Business and Management

Looptijd: 1/09/2016 - 31/12/2019

Financing: PWO

First research project

Development of a feasible workplace exercise programme

Although sufficient exercise is an important aspect of a healthy lifestyle and it offers a lot of health benefits, only one-third of Belgians exercise enough.

From an economic, legal and healthcare perspective, exercise programmes that can be implemented at work contain a great opportunity. Unfortunately, such actions usually have limited and variable results. One possible hypothesis is that the commonly used methods (i.e. long training sessions at low intensity, such as walking and cycling) counteract the most frequently cited barrier, namely a lack of time to exercise (more).

In this project, we developed a scientifically based and feasible exercise programme, i.e. HIIT @ WORK. It is based on an innovative and time-efficient way of training, namely High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT training is known to be at least as efficient in improving health and fitness as traditionally offered activities such as walking or cycling. The high time efficiency (only 4 minutes per workout) and the fact that it can be done in normal working clothes and without fitness equipment make it a very feasible form of training.

In this project, we used design methodology: via various iterative cycles, the researchers obtained the necessary feedback and (re)guidance from the end-user (display screen workers). For this, we used the following steps, among others:

An exploratory inventory study of the standard user context for exercise programmes at work (n=10)
Determination of end-user groups and study of promoting and hindering factors of exercise programmes at work (semi-structured in-depth interviews, n=50)
Focus group with management
Several try-outs of 1 training, 1 week, 1 month and 3 months.

In recent years, the workplace has become the place of choice for health promotion. Interestingly, campaigns focus strongly on mental health and the prevention of psychological problems such as stress and burn-out. However, it is precisely in these issues that the promotion of physical activity plays an important role. After all, an active lifestyle not only reduces the risk of typical physical hazards such as cardiovascular disease and obesity, but also promotes vitality and energy, among other things, which are typically associated with mental health.

To break down the barriers (lack of time, cost and location requirements) experienced by employees to exercise more at work, the research group developed the HIIT @ WORK exercise package. This programme has already been implemented in several try-outs, with results showing that the majority of participants are convinced that HIIT @ WORK would have a positive effect on his/her health, psychological well-being and work performance. Nevertheless, there is a need for further deepening.

A first objective of this PWO project is therefore an extension (from 4 to 12 weeks) and a broadening (embedding in policy) of the programme. We also want to investigate the effect of HIIT @ WORK on the mental health of screen workers. To this end, we take the following steps: in a first phase, we shape an effective, extended and motivating HIIT programme in co-creation (with researchers, end-users & health coaches). In a second phase, the HIIT programme will be implemented in 3 companies for 12 weeks, in order to investigate its effects on stress levels, among other things.