Snack on exercise. 48% of people in New Year to move more and this is the most frequent New Year resolution to themselves for the next year. Recently, scientists have been actively studying the so–called exercise snacks — snacking exercises or short (from 1 to 15 minutes) intensive workouts. Before that, they were neglected, and even considered that episodes of only 10 minutes or longer should be included in the general activity score. It seems to many that if there is no full–fledged time for warm-up, workout, hitch, shower and sauna after, then there is no point even starting, and in a couple of approaches there is no effect and benefit. But this is not the case. Even the smallest thing is much better than nothing. Moreover, regular mini-workouts effectively reproduce the results of regular ones.
Just 5 minutes of training is enough to reduce anxiety. 12 minutes of intensive cardio changes the level of 80% of circulating metabolites in the blood. People who ran three flights of stairs three times a day got a result similar to cardio training. Just 10 minutes of cycling improves memory. 15 minutes of interval training 3 times a week is enough for muscle growth. A two-minute walk or one set of squats every half hour is enough to control glucose levels. Five minutes of movement every hour effectively protects against many diseases.
There are different types of snack exercises, but more often it is one exercise (it is easier to do), basic, and not isolated in the form of one approach to failure, in the form of a series of intervals (tabata cycle — 4 minutes with tabata timer turned on), lifting weights. Do it at least three times a day, you can do it every day (alternating exercises). Exercises: jumping rope, squats, push–ups, approach to the horizontal bar, burpees, rapid ascent and descent of stairs, jumps of various types (from asterisks to jumping), running on the spot with a high knee lift, sprints, exercise bike, swing weights, boxing with dumbbells in your hands — and you can come up with many more types.
So: one exercise at a time — either as a series workout to failure or in small sprints with rest three times a day. You will certainly have time for this, and such exercises, among other things, improve mood and productivity, break long-term sitting inactivity, and do not require much effort to perform.
Exercise Snacks: A Novel Strategy to Improve Cardiometabolic Health Exerc Sport Sci Rev . 2022 Jan 1;50(1):31–37.
Do stair climbing exercise “snacks” improve cardiorespiratory fitness? Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism 16 January 2019
Metabolic Architecture of Acute Exercise Response in Middle-Aged Adults in the Community. Circulation, 2020
Inertial Load Power Cycling Training Increases Muscle Mass and Aerobic Power in Older Adults Med Sci Sports Exerc 2021 Jun 1;53(6):1188–1193.