Fitting an hour-long workout into your day can be tricky for a lot of people. Fortunately, lengthy sessions at the gym aren’t a prerequisite of a successful and sustainable exercise plan.
If you spend most of your days sitting at a desk and struggling to find time to move, “exercise snacking” could be the perfect solution. The fitness trend requires committing to a few short bouts of activity throughout the day – think a snack, instead of a full meal – and it offers plenty of benefits.
A small study conducted by the University of Essex found that just 16 minutes of bodyweight exercises like squats and lunges, spread across a standard eight-hour work day, helped subjects strengthen their muscles and boost their balance over the course of four weeks.
And a 2022 article, published in the Exercise and Sport Sciences Review, found positive impacts from even shorter bursts of activity – namely, 15-30 seconds of vigorous-intensity exercises such as cycling or stair climbing, three times per day. It concluded that this strategy was effective at “improving cardiorespiratory fitness and exercise performance in inactive adults”.
In short, treating your workouts like little snacks and peppering them throughout your day, rather than going for a full 45 minute, one hour, or longer session daily, could improve your strength, flexibility and longevity dramatically.
If that impressive list of benefits has piqued your interest and you’re short on time but want to get a workout in, read on. Below, we speak to three experts on walking, stretching and strength training, and task each with sharing a few simple exercise snacking ideas for Independent readers to try.
