Exercise Snacks
There is nothing more harmful to your health, from a lifestyle perspective, than sedentary behavior (not exercising).
Similarly, the single most health-promoting behavior you can adopt is consistent, structured exercise.
This is reflected in the fact that VO2max (a measure of cardiovascular fitness) and grip strength (used in research as a proxy for overall muscle mass) predict how long (and how well) you’ll live better than anything else you can measure. [1,2]
Despite this, about ~80% of people in the united states do not meet physical activity guidelines. [3]
According to the CDC [4], the most commonly cited reasons people are not sufficiently active include:
Lack of time
Lack of social support
Lack of energy
Lack of motivation
Fear of injury due to exercise
Lack of skill
Cost of access
Weather conditions
At face value, these are all very valid barriers.
However, I would challenge this with the following:
These “barriers” are actually just misconceptions about exercise masquerading as barriers.
“Exercise snacks” are a novel approach to exercise that solve all of these “barriers” for absolutely anyone in 1-5 minutes maximum.
In the remainder of this article, I’ll explain:
What they are
Health benefits they provide
Specific exercise snack protocols to follow
What is an exercise snack?
An exercise snack is a very brief, high intensity bout of movement.
These can be done either multiple times per day (e.g. breakfast, lunch, dinner schedule) or once per day daily.
Most protocols in the research are ~15-60 seconds in duration; the longest exercise snack (to my knowledge) that has been studied is 5 minutes in duration.
Health benefits of exercise snacks
With how short an exercise snack tends to be, people often struggle to believe there’s really a point.
However, there is now no shortage of research to show that your health can meaningfully improve with this approach.
This exercise snack strategy has been shown to:
Improve VO2max (a measure of your body’s ability to move blood, oxygen, and nutrients in circulation)
Reduce blood pressure
Reduce fasting glucose
Reduce LDL(c) (’bad’ cholesterol)
Slightly increase HDL (’good’ cholesterol)
What’s also noteworthy is that there is no reported incidence of pain or injury occurring from exercise snacks; despite large amounts of data being collected on them now.
In other words: they are safe and provide the benefits above without increased risk of injury.
Who these are helpful for
These exercise snacks have primarily shown benefit in people who are:
Not meeting physical activity guidelines
Not completing a sufficient number of steps each day
The guidelines for minimum amounts of physical activity, from almost every relevant institution, are:
150 minutes per week of moderate intensity aerobic exercise (cardio)
60-120 minutes per week of resistance training (strength training)
The health benefits derived from your daily step count tend to increase as they increase; with most of the benefit being derived once you reach 7000 steps per day. [9]
Anyone regularly completing less than 5000 steps per day is considered sedentary, and the average American completes around ~3000 per day.
If you find yourself in either of these buckets, either insufficient structured exercise or insufficient activity throughout the day (measured via steps), then you are likely to benefit from exercise snacks.
If you are active throughout the day and meeting physical activity guidelines, then exercise snacks may not be the highest leverage thing for you to focus on.
They are by no means “useless.” More activity is almost always better, but there may be more worthwhile areas for you to devote your time and energy.
Designing your exercise snack routine
An exercise snack can
last anywhere from 15 seconds to 5 minutes
be done once per day or multiple times per day
be done every day or just on select days out of the week
The single most important thing to consider as we work through examples and you formulate your own plan is what works with your schedule.
None of this works if you don’t actually do them, so making them as convenient to do as possible is priority #1.
In the research, there are a few specific protocols that have been used and tested.
These include:
Stair climbing
3 stories
3 times per day (1-4 hours apart)
Daily
Stair climbing
15-30 seconds
Every hour throughout a work day (~8-9 times total)
Only done on work days (e.g. office jobs with prolonged sitting)
Cycling
20 seconds max effort cycling
3 times per day (1-4 hours apart)
3 days per week
That said, these tend to be practical protocols for research purposes, but their practicality is not likely to translate to most of you reading this.
So, here is a step-by-step process to designing your own exercise snack routine:
Step 1: Exercise selection
In all likelihood it does not matter what specific exercise you choose.
The benefits from exercise snacks do not come from the contraction of any specific muscle.
They come from the systemic, physiologic response to high intensity movement.
Some options include:
Bodyweight squats
Chair squats
Wall squats
Lunges
Stairs
Running
Planks
Supermans
Side planks
Push-ups
etc.
Step 2: Set your dosing
Once you have selected the exercise you are going to use, you need to identify how much of it you are going to do.
The simplest thing to do would be to set a timer and perform the exercise until the time is up. You could start at 15 seconds and increase this as you become able.
Or, you could set a number of reps you are to perform at each exercise snack bout.
The part that really matters here is the intensity of the movement.
In order for you to see benefit, the exercise snack must feel challenging.
1 minute of easy walking won’t cut it, but going up a flight of stairs as fast as you can will.
Step 3: Set your schedule
The only “rule” I would add here is that there should be more exercise snacks in the week than there are days in the week.
To my knowledge, the lowest amount of exercise snacks per week that have showed benefit in the research were done 3x/day on 3 days out of the week.
As long as this is met, there’s no wrong answer as far as I see it.
You could perform your exercise snack once, twice, or three times per day.
You could perform them every day or just on select days.
I do think there is value to making this a daily practice.
Whenever I’ve started working with a client who was previously sedentary, the most succesful ones weren’t succesful because of the magic training or nutrition programming I gave them.
They were succesful because, over time, not working out became as weird as not brushing their teeth to them.
There was a fundamental identity shift which drove the results.
This change in identity isn’t something that can be spoken and then achieved, it is acquired through the repetitive nature of the new behavior.
Example exercise snack protocols
To wrap this all up, let’s review a few example routines you can start following today.
Example 1:
15 seconds of bodyweight squats
Performed 2x/day in the morning and in the evening
Performed daily
Example 2:
15 seconds of planks, 15 seconds of supermans, repeat 2x
Performed 1x/day in the morning
Performed daily
Example 3:
Ascend 1 flight of stairs as quickly as you can
Performed 3x/day at least 2 hours apart
Performed on work days only
Example 4:
15 seconds of bodyweight squats in the morning, 15 seconds of knee push-ups in the evening
Performed daily
Example 5:
1 minute of running
Performed 1x/day in the evenings
Performed daily
Final thoughts
At the beginning of this article, I made the claim that the most commonly cited barriers to meeting physical activity guidelines were actually just misconceptions about exercise.
Exercise snacks don’t justify this claim for ALL of the barriers, but they do justify the claim for the most commonly cited.
Lack of time
There is no amount of exercise that is too little for it to be beneficial.
As discussed, there are studies where sedentary individuals regularly perform exercise snacks of 15 seconds and see improvements in health & fitness markers.
Just because you can’t exercise for an hour every day doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exercise at all.
It is reality that most people don’t have time for a “fully optimized” training program across the week. It is also reality that most people can find 15 seconds to spare at some point in the day.
Something is always better than nothing. Always.
Fear of injury / safety
Broadly speaking, exercise is far safer than people realize.
The sport of powerlifting is made up of three of the most demonized exercises there are: barbell back squat, barbell bench press, barbell deadlifts.
The injury prevalence in powerlifting is ~1-4 injuries / 1000 participation hours.
Soccer and basketball have injury prevalences of ~8-23 / 1000 participation hours.
In other words: you have a lower risk of injury in a squat rack than you do on a basketball court.
Despite this, people will wince if you say you are going to deadlift but don’t bat an eye if you say you are going to play pick-up basketball.
Exercise snacks reinforce this concept even further.
As mentioned, no injury has been recorded thus far from exercise snacks.
This is true despite them being done in sedentary individuals and oftentimes being done without any warm-up.
Cost / access
Fitness can become an expensive pursuit, or it can also be an absolutely free pursuit.
The benefits of exercise snacks do not come from the performance of any specific exercise, they come from the high intensity you’re body is exposed to.
Planks, push-ups, bodyweight squats, etc. can all accomplish this without the use of any equipment at all.
I can go on and on, but I imagine you get the point.
If you care about your health and have the physical capacity to exercise (meaning some other condition doesn’t physically prevent you from doing so), then you need to exercise.
Imagine your health is a boat that has a number of holes in it. Sedentary behavior is the biggest hole. Prioritizing other health pursuits instead of exercise is the equivalent of plugging the smaller holes in the boat before the biggest one.
Even if you cannot manage a “full length” workout, you can manage a 15-second to 5-minute workout. And those can make a difference.
