Similar to previous guidelines, these recognize the importance of regular activity on physical and mental well-being. The guidelines recommend a target of 150 to 300 minutes per week of moderate activity (such as brisk walking) or 75 to 150 minutes per week of vigorous activity (such as running) or a combination of the two.
Gone is the requirement that your exercise minutes need to be conducted in chunks of at least 10 minutes.
Snack on Exercise Throughout the Day
Supporting these guidelines is research on so-called exercise snacking: short bursts of activity that you “snack” on throughout the day. Exercise snacking has grown out of research on high-intensity interval training (HIIT)—repeated bursts of high-intensity exercise interspersed with active rest (low-intensity exercise, usually of the same activity). Sandwiched between a warm-up and cool-down, a full HIIT session may last 20 to 30 minutes.Exercise snacking differs from HIIT in both the duration of the activity burst and the time in between. Whereas the exercise bursts in HIIT can range from 30 seconds to four minutes, in exercise snacking, these are reduced to 20 seconds.
Fitting In Your Daily Snacks
Exercise snacking isn’t new, although the research and the term are. If you’ve ever been sitting at your computer or watching TV and had the urge to stand up and walk around or stretch, you’ve had an exercise snack. This type of body and brain break is famous among many writers. Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, spends a minute every hour when writing doing push-ups and sit-ups. And why not? Short bursts of exercise can give you an energy boost and improve your productivity.What makes the exercise snack different from standing up and stretching or walking to the kitchen, is increasing your heart and breathing rates. But you don’t need to worry about sweating. Moving about for one to two minutes isn’t enough time for you to start. This makes it easy to do in everyday clothes.
Some activities you can do include stair climbing, jogging in place, jumping jacks, and burpees. You can even do a brisk walk or jog around the block. If you have a stationary bike or rowing machine, just jump on that for a minute or so.
It’s still ideal to get in your regular meal of exercise as well as your snacks. But exercise snacks are a great way to build activity into your day.
If you think you’ll have a hard time remembering to get up every so often, technology can help. From a simple cooking timer to the alarm on your phone, to watches that vibrate reminding you to get up. But perhaps the most effective may be using a screen-time app on your computer, tablet, or phone. Some of these apps lock out your device for a set period of time, giving you the impetus to get up and move.