Studies suggest, 40 percent of middle-aged adults do less than 10 minutes of continuous brisk walking a month.
This article is going to discuss micro workouts and how it is as beneficial as 30 minutes of continuous exercise once a day.
What is micro workouts?
It’s a great name – micro workouts.
But this is strictly short bursts of exercise.
We all know we should be doing about 30 minutes a day, 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity.
But we struggle to fit it into the day quite often, so the idea behind exercise snacking is you can break it down into really, really short sections.
And it can be as short as a minute or two, it can be a five minute walk.
There is research to suggest it is as beneficial as doing it in one chunk and it can be more beneficial.
It can be something as simple as – and I’ll demonstrate now – getting up and sitting down on your chair.
But can short bursts of moderate exercise really be as good as a longer session?
We put micro workouts to the test.
Volunteers who do far less than the recommended level of exercise were recruited to take part in a short experiment.
They tried two different approaches;
on one day they do 30 minutes of brisk walking all in one go, on another day, they try micro workouts where they break down that 30 minutes, into six bursts of five minutes, spread throughout the day.
Four weeks later, the volunteers returned to find out whether micro workouts was more beneficial than the traditional methods of exercise.
When the 30 minutes of walk occurred, the volunteers blood sugar and blood fats were monitored.
On average, they were around 40 percent lower than on the day where you did no exercise at all.
Compared to micro workouts, very similar results were found – it was around 40 percent.
Strength-based exercise like lifting weights can also increase heart rate.
If you don’t have weights, fill an empty milk jug with water and lift that, alternatively, grab two tinned cans.
But you don’t even necessarily have to get your heart rate up, exercise snacking can be stretching or mobility based too.
Some simple stretches or grabbing a yoga mat to loosen up your body still counts.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. Healthy Supplies Shop is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of healthy supplies shop and we do not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.