Snacking – “Finally” you say, “she is talking about food – yay!” I have to disappoint. I have quite a bit of formal and informal training under my belt, but nutrition is not one of the areas I have training in. I will therefore leave that topic to my many good colleagues out there.
What I do want to talk about instead is ‘exercise snacks’ – or the idea that including short bouts of intense exercise into your routine does not need to mean you are completely maxed out for the rest of the day. Yes, there is research to suggest that 15 minute sessions of short bouts of intense exercise (interspersed with rest) performed three times a week are the most beneficial for physical, cognitive and mental health. However, there is also research to show that there is benefit from two bouts of intense exercise as short as 20 seconds. This cuts the total workout time to 10 minutes. Woohoo!
Also, injecting speed into your movement practices or chosen sport less frequently than the often-cited three sessions per week can benefit you. While the positive effects may be less marked, there is still good evidence to show that there is an increase in fitness even with infrequent high-intensity interval training. Alternatively, you might only like to commit to one week of training with some tempo in your workouts and this has the power to give you a health boost similar to training in this way for several weeks.
If you are still not convinced, do not have access to a suitable environment for ‘all out efforts’ or hate the idea of your heart racing and your lungs and muscles burning even for a few seconds, consider this: The research on interval training has sparked further investigations into the effect of shorter sessions of submaximal exercise (often referred to as ‘exercise snacks’). These sessions have shown to be particularly promising in managing blood glucose and reducing body fat. A simple way of adding exercise snacks to your day is to move for around 1 minute every one to four hours throughout the day. For example, you might like to march on the spot while the jug is boiling for your tea or coffee or take the stairs to the meeting rather than the lift.
So, perhaps next time you are tempted to grab an afternoon snack from the pantry, bakery or convenience store around the corner, think about using the 5 minutes to snack on some tempo. Your brain, heart, lungs and afternoon productivity will thank you for it.
If you are keen to learn more about how adding some tempo to your physical and mental activity can benefit you, follow me or subscribe to the blogpost. To work with me one-on-one to apply some of these principles to your own life and movement, message me for a free call. I look forward to hearing from you.
References (for the extra keen)
Atakan et al. (2021)
Metcalfe et al. (2024)
Sultana et al. (2019)
Wang et al. (2024)