If you tend to bypass your usual workout class or your lifestyle makes it challenging to carve out time for fitness – snack-sized exercises may be the solution. It’s normal to take a break from your standard exercise routine, and adapting your daily movements can help keep your workout goals on track.
Even if we have time to exercise, the natural effects of aging can impact our stamina. This is often due to changes in our muscle endurance, body composition and joint pain.¹
Because exercise can help everyone regain or maintain their physical health and mental wellness, it’s important that we can find new ways to incorporate exercise into our days. Exercise snacking is a new, convenient, time-efficient way to maintain or enhance our physical health. If you’re wondering “what is exercise snacking?”, read on as our F45 specialists explore this exciting new approach to fitness.
What is exercise snacking?
Exercise snacking involves using short bursts of exercise to maintain or improve fitness. These exercises are bite-size and can be planned or performed spontaneously to promote energy and fitness. They’re usually incorporated to assist a larger workout routine but can be implemented as your primary form of fitness depending on your goals. A short burst of exercise can be as little as twenty seconds but will usually take between 1-3 minutes. Convenience is a fundamental part of exercise snacks. Ultimately, this style of exercise can benefit anyone who wants to sustain their fitness while prioritising other areas of their life for time reasons. This approach may also suit older people, whose bodies tend to be more comfortable working out for short periods. The other benefit of exercise snacking is injury prevention – where there is less risk of pulling, breaking or straining areas of the body.
How does exercise snacking work?
Short bouts of vigorous physical activity (less than 1 minute) can boost your cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular endurance and improve quality of life.² Exercise snacks are meant to fit naturally into your lifestyle and can reduce the risk of high blood pressure or high cholesterol that often comes as a result of spending too much time being sedentary.³ The exercises themselves usually won’t require any additional equipment, contain little-to-no warmup and can make use of the surrounding environment. As with all exercise, they should only be performed in a way that is controlled and safe, which is why most exercise snacks will only use body weight as resistance. Common examples of exercise snacking are:
- Star jumps
- Lunges
- Stair climbing
- Squats
- Brisk walking
To receive exercise snacking benefits, the movement performed needs to be intense. What counts as intense is specific to you. For an older person wanting to strengthen their joints, 15 lunges in 1 minute can raise the heart rate while managing discomfort. Whereas someone who is used to advanced functional training may perform 50 lunges in one minute.
Exercise snacking benefits
Exercise snacks are a solution to many barriers that can prevent people from exercising or maintaining a workout routine. Not having enough time or space to work out are common reasons you may struggle to exercise. Or you may find that longer forms of exercise can aggravate joint pain or other health conditions. At F45 we create quality workouts that are enjoyable and achievable for everyone. Below, discover the potential benefits of exercise snacking.
Improved cardio fitness
Regular exercise snacks can improve the amount of oxygen your body is able to use during exercise, elevating your aerobic endurance. 4 Brief yet intense cardio is great for those who may experience discomfort with traditional cardio exercises (such as running) due to joint pain. If you are navigating knee pain, a 1-minute stair climb can be more convenient than longer exercises that are light on your joints, such as swimming or cycling.
Promoting blood flow
Inactivity can reduce blood flow in your legs and increase feelings of stress. It’s very common for people to spend more than six hours per day sitting down – especially if you work in an office environment. Exercise snacks are a great way to combat the effects of sedentary behaviour.4 Exercise snacking supports oxygen and nutrient delivery to the heart since it increases blood flow. For many people with heart-related conditions, short high- intensity exercise is a safe way to rehabilitate your cardio system and help prevent future health problems.5
Maintains fitness levels
When we’re unable to follow our planned workout routine or fitness program, a common worry is losing our fitness. After two weeks of inactivity, you may notice slight drops in your cardio fitness or muscle power, and these reductions can become more significant as time passes.6 Exercise snacking is a great way to prevent the loss of cardio fitness or muscle mass during times of busyness or recovery. This way, when you return to your regular fitness program, you can pick up where you left off.
Convenience
To enjoy the benefits of intense exercise, you need the time to do it. Time efficiency and ease-of-performance are the foundation of exercise snacking benefits, as they make fitness more accessible. Exercise snacks can be performed during your walk to work, during a five-minute break in the office, or at home while dinner is in the oven. There are a variety of exercises you could do to suit any environment and they can be easily adapted to challenge everyone.
Exercise snacking example
We encourage our members to implement short and intense exercise snacking when they’re unable to attend their usual cardio class or resistance training session. To finish, we’ll show what a planned day of exercise snacks could look like.
8am: 50 squats in 1 minute. This could be done before a morning shower.
12.15pm: 2 minutes of stair climbing, followed by a 1-minute walk to cool down.
7pm: 50 star jumps in 1 minute.
Remember, you can modify the exercises to what you’re comfortable with and try to blend them naturally into your day. We’ve chosen the above times based on common free periods during a 9-5 working day.
Harness exercise snacking benefits to level up your fitness. Next, discover how to build muscle after 60.
1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3665513/
2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02100-x
3 https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/31/4/661/25574/Breaks-in-Sedentary-TimeBeneficial-associations
4 https://journals.lww.com/acsm-essr/Fulltext/2022/01000/Exercise_Snacks__A_Novel_Strategy_to_Improve.5.aspx
5 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sports-and-active-living/articles/10.3389/fspor.2021.630912/full
6 https://au.wahoofitness.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-lose-fitness/
