Daily 10-minute exercise regimen can benefit the entire body and promote strength development.
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Exercise snacking is a revolutionary approach to fitness that encourages breaking up prolonged periods of inactivity with short bursts of physical activity throughout the day. This strategy, which lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes, involves doing simple bodyweight exercises multiple times daily rather than a single long workout session.
According to research, this method can significantly improve cardiorespiratory fitness, leg strength, balance, and mitigate some harms associated with sedentary behaviour [1]. To create your own mini-workout, you can choose exercises like lunges, squats, jumping jacks, push-ups, or jogging in place. A typical session might consist of 1-3 rounds of 10-15 reps of a few exercises, lasting about 2-5 minutes in total, repeated several times during your workday or free moments. The key is to keep sessions short, manageable, and easy to fit into your routine without special equipment [1].
As you progress over time, you can gradually increase the intensity, volume, or complexity of your mini-workouts. This can mean adding more repetitions, incorporating more challenging variations, reducing rest time between sets, or increasing the number of daily sessions. Tracking your strength or endurance improvements, such as more reps completed or less fatigue, can help guide your progression [1][2][3].
Araceli De Leon, an ACE-certified health coach and personal trainer, suggests that just 10 minutes a day of exercise can help individuals become fitter and stronger. For beginners, she recommends choosing three to four bodyweight exercises as a circuit, such as squats, lunges, planks, and push-ups. To ensure a well-rounded workout, De Leon suggests incorporating a warm-up and cool-down into a 5 to 10-minute session. For a warm-up, she recommends two minutes of arm movements like arm circles and light, dynamic moves such as marching in place and gentle squats [4].
For a cool-down, De Leon suggests focused breathing and gentle stretches like forward fold, chest opener, or seated twist. As individuals get stronger, they can incorporate resistance bands, mini loops, dumbbells, or at-home suspension trainers into their workouts. Alternating between cardio, strength, and mobility-focused mini workouts is another approach suggested by De Leon.
Consistency is key to seeing results with exercise snacking. For beginners, 5-10lb dumbbells are a safe range for weight selection. The ACE Exercise Library is a resource for creating workouts or getting ideas, and it can be filtered by muscle group, equipment, and goal to build mini workouts [5].
In summary, exercise snacking uses multiple brief bodyweight exercise bursts to improve fitness efficiently during a busy day, and you progress by incrementally increasing workout difficulty or frequency [1][2][3]. Embrace this innovative approach to fitness for a healthier lifestyle.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7228084/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7414066/ [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364761/ [4] https://www.acefitness.org/education-and-resources/professional/programs-and-resources/article/66511/exercise-snacking-a-new-approach-to-fitness/ [5] https://www.acefitness.org/ace-exercise-library/1000/ace-exercise-library/
- To supplement your exercise snacking routine, consider incorporating yoga workouts for flexibility and mindfulness, as they provide various health benefits beyond cardiorespiratory fitness.
- Embracing science and health-and-wellness practices, it's essential to understand that pairing exercise snacking with regular cardio workouts can maximize overall physical fitness.
- When you feel ready to diversify your fitness-and-exercise regimen, take advantage of resources like the ACE Exercise Library to explore strength training workouts and challenges that help you progress effectively.
