Exercise snacks: improve your health in just a few minutes a day

Your fitness tracker may be urging you to hit 10,000 steps, complete 30 minutes of cardio or spend an hour in the gym each day. Yet it may be possible to boost your health with only a few minutes of activity daily. A mounting body of research indicates that this is the case.

"Exercise snacks" are short spells of vigorous movement, usually lasting no more than a minute, performed at intervals during the day. They could involve walking up several flights of stairs, completing squats in a break from work or doing a rapid set of jumping jacks before lunch.

Rather than being completed consecutively like a conventional workout, these "snacks" are distributed across the hours you are awake. They are typically separated by one to four hours of everyday activities, including work, commuting and watching television.

This approach is distinct from high-intensity interval training (Hiit), which may involve several hard bursts within one 20-minute session. Exercise snacks are closer to grazing over the course of a day than eating one complete meal.

A recent meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine reported that exercise snacks substantially improved cardiorespiratory fitness in adults who had previously been sedentary. This measure reflects how effectively the heart and lungs perform during physical exertion.

The review found that these small chunks of exercise produced worthwhile health gains. An encouraging 83% of participants also maintained their routines for as long as three months.

Why exercise snacking works

Roughly one in three adults globally fails to achieve sufficient physical activity. The reasons they give tend to be familiar: a lack of time and motivation. Exercise snacks directly address both of these obstacles.

A 2019 study asked sedentary young adults to climb a three-flight staircase vigorously three times daily, allowing one to four hours of recovery between each bout. Every session also began with a short warm-up involving jumping jacks, squats and lunges.

After six weeks, those climbing the stairs had significantly better cardiorespiratory fitness than a control group. This is an important marker associated with longevity and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

The efficiency of exercise snacks is particularly notable. Current guidance calls for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, each week. However, exercise snacks can generate measurable improvements in substantially less time, sometimes requiring only a few minutes each day.

A 2024 randomised controlled trial compared stair-climbing exercise snacks with 40 minutes of moderate-intensity cycling, undertaken three times a week. The exercise snacks participants completed three all-out 30-second stair climbs in each session and improved their fitness by 7%. By contrast, the cycling group had no significant change.

Their possible advantages are not limited to fitness. In a large study involving more than 25,000 adults who did not exercise, people who built up only three to four minutes of vigorous movement a day - through fast walking or stair climbing, for instance - had a 40% lower risk of death from any cause. Their risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was also nearly 50% lower than for people who did none.

Exercise snacks may benefit blood sugar as well. Studies indicate that brief, intense bouts done before meals can limit post-meal blood sugar rises in people with insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type 2 diabetes. This could be welcome news for anyone concerned about metabolic health.

The best exercise snacks

The appeal of exercise snacks lies in how adaptable they are. No specialist equipment, gym membership or change of clothing is needed. Here are practical options for fitting them into your day:

Stair climbing is perhaps the exercise snack that has received the most research. Anyone who works in an office building or lives in a block of flats already has access to free exercise equipment.

Aim to climb vigorously - quickly enough that you are breathing heavily when you reach the top - for 20-60 seconds, on two or three occasions during the day. Earlier research showed that women who gradually built up to five stair ascents a day improved their fitness by 17% in only eight weeks.

Short walking bouts also qualify, as long as they are vigorous. A brisk one-minute walk around the office or a quick circuit of the garden a few times daily can work. To gain benefits, though, the pace needs to be fast enough to make conversation difficult.

Bodyweight movements, including squats, lunges and wall push-ups, can be performed in almost any location. Try doing ten squats whenever you make a cup of tea, or complete wall push-ups before lunch. Intensity is crucial: your heart rate should increase and you should become slightly breathless.

With exercise snacks, regularity is more important than perfection. Research suggests that even sessions lasting as little as 20 seconds can help improve fitness when they are repeated consistently.

The key is to attach these snacks to habits you already have. Take the stairs before your morning coffee. Perform squats during television adverts. Go for a brisk walk after ending a work call.

Exercise snacks cannot provide every benefit that comes with a comprehensive fitness programme. However, for the millions of people who find it difficult to make time for conventional workouts, they represent a practical starting point supported by increasingly robust science.

The largest health improvements occur when a person moves from doing nothing to doing something. Therefore, when you are waiting for the kettle to boil or have a few minutes between meetings, consider an exercise snack. Your heart will thank you.

Jack McNamara, Senior Lecturer in Clinical Exercise Physiology, University of East London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.