Many people think that there is only one way to exercise and it involves putting aside a portion of time to dedicate to a specific program. While this is certainly the most common method people use, there are also different ways to increase the amount of overall exercise you get throughout the day.
Exercise snacking is a method to try and increase the frequency of movement throughout the day. It involves finding ways throughout the day to perform short bursts of activity (typically 2 minutes or less) rather than concentrating those efforts into a longer session. This has been shown to be effective for reducing the risk of all cause cardiovascular and cancer mortality, has important benefits for blood sugar control and can also reduce musculoskeletal injury risk.
A large part of the benefits from snacking also comes down to changes in posture and position. While we tolerate certain postures or positions better than others, there is no one perfect position or posture that we can stay in indefinitely without experiencing discomfort. Exercise snacks provide us with the opportunity to explore more frequent changes in position, and because they are all different it gives us greater position variation. This also helps with circulation and provides us with a mental boost as movement also stimulates the brain.
For many people this is also a good way to make exercise easier to fit in. One of the most commonly cited reasons for not meeting the recommended amount of exercise per week is due to a lack of time. Exercise snacks are easy to squeeze in between our daily tasks and the more often you can do this, the more your overall level of activity builds up incrementally. The most important factor in making exercise snacks most beneficial are to ensure that you perform them every day and multiple times throughout the day. Where possible you also should try and choose exercise snacks that are higher intensity than gentle stretching or balance exercises.
Some easy examples of exercise snacks include:
- While waiting for the kettle to boil, perform some high knee marches on the spot.
- When getting up out of the chair, perform 10 sit to stand chair squat repeats before moving on.
- After washing up at the sink, perform 10-15 push-ups on the kitchen bench
Preparation is the key to successful implementation. While you don’t need to specify the actual times you are going to have the exercise snack, having some different options of what work for your level of fitness and also based on the environment you will be in are essential for taking advantage of the unplanned times where we have time to kill in between activities.