Kan en tre veckors HIIT-interventionförbättra konditions- och hälsomarkörer hos universitetsstudenter?

Sammanfattning

Abstract University students tend to be exploited to more stressors and pressure from study assignments during their studies than most other groups in society. They also tend to engage in more sedentary behaviour during their studies as a result attending lectures and studying throughout the day. In their spare time university students also risk their health by consuming a greater amount of alcohol and at the same time not putting in enough effort in healthy food options. A lot of earlier research addresses the issue and how the sedentary lifestyle affects students' mental health and wellbeing, which in turn affects their study results and cognitive capacity. The present study aims to investigate whether university students' health can improve by doing a three-week HIIT intervention on an exercise bike. The selection for the study is students currently attending Malmö university. By running health markers such as blood lipids, blood pressure and other bloodmarkers followed by an maxtest for estimating V ̇ O₂max, gave a good overlook of the participant's current health before the intervention. Participants in the study then went on with the three week intervention by themselves to then follow up by running the same health markers again to investigate whether these have been improved. The results showed no significant evidence that a three-week HIIT program improved health and wellbeing. However, the descriptive statistics indicated improvements across most health markers in the majority of participants, which may suggest a positive effect on the health and wellbeing of university students. Keywords: 3-week intervention, bicycle test, blood lipids, blood markers, HIIT, ramp test, university students, V ̇ O₂max, well being, Wmax.