Kevin explores the concept of "exercise snacks", short bursts of high-effort movement sprinkled throughout your day. Learn the benefits, limitations, and why the path to fitness success may require more than just a quick fix.
Kevin explores the concept of "exercise snacks", short bursts of high-effort movement sprinkled throughout your day. Learn the benefits, limitations, and why the path to fitness success may require more than just a quick fix.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy, Coach Kevin Don here. This week, I want to touch on something you may or may not have heard tell of: the exercise ‘snack.’ Like the small amounts of food you eat between meals, the ‘exercise snack’ is a similar idea. The little bits of exercise when you can’t have the full meal. I want to take a look at if it can be as beneficial to you to have these small ‘exercise snacks’ throughout the day or week as it is to spend more traditional gym time on training.
First off, we need more information on what an ‘exercise snack’ is. It’s born of the same concepts as HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) the difference being that, in HIIT, you do very short, highly intense bursts of movement, followed by short rest periods over and over. With exercise snacking, you do short, high effort bursts of exercise, but the rest periods are much longer, with hours between. A good quote I saw on the topic said that with exercise snacking, instead of restructuring your day around exercise, you are restructuring exercise around your day. The ‘advantage’ here is that you just take an exercise snack whenever you have a free moment. I can see how this can be really appealing to busy people. Work, family commitments and maybe even traditional gym access can be barriers to getting some daily fitness in. I’ll get into some examples of exercise snacks in a moment, but for now, let’s have a look at the purported benefits.
In one study (1), participants performed traditional HIIT on a stationary bike, doing 3 sets of 20 second all out effort sprints, followed by 2 minutes of rest. Another group did the ‘exercise snack’ version of this, where they spread 20 seconds of effort over 3 sets throughout the day, with several hours between sets. Over a six week training period, the improvements in aerobic fitness between the two groups were comparable.
Another study (2), from McMaster University showed that fitness benefits can be achieved by performing only 3 vigorous bouts of stair climbing a day.
So now we know more about what an exercise snack is and some purported benefits, but what could it look like in the real world? Examples of exercise snacks could include doing 3-5 rounds of high effort movements for 20-60 seconds at a time. Movements such as jumping jacks, squats, lunges or even jogging on the spot or climbing stairs at home or at work all count. You could even do weighted movements, like goblet squats, dumbbell cleans or kettlebell swings. Whatever movement you choose will need to be a ‘fast contraction’ because you want to be moving vigorously. So a 20 second stroll 3 times a day would be a poor choice for an exercise snack.
So, after hearing what exercise snacks are and what some of the benefits might be, you may be wondering what I think. Well, first, it’s important to note that most people don’t bother reading studies. Hearing that a study says something is enough for a lot of people. It’s important to know that both of the studies that the myriad of articles and blog posts written about exercise snacks reference were performed on relatively small sample sizes, and the participants were all described as ‘inactive’ or ‘sedentary’.
The next thing to keep in mind is that studies themselves are limited by parameters. The parameters here might have been: in sedentary people, does exercise snacking improve VO2 max comparable to HIIT training over a 6 week training window? The reality is that training is a much more complex and nuanced situation. Small parameters can lead to reductionist thinking. This kind of reductionist thought is, to me, at least, dystopian. Do we want to apply this kind of thinking to everything as time moves forward into a future where we don’t need to eat because studies tell us that we can gain all our nutrition from a daily pill? We don’t need to go on vacation because we can visit anywhere we want in hyper realistic virtual reality? And we don’t need to hug our pets or loved ones for more than 10 seconds to have the same oxytocin release as a longer hug?
Objectively, it appears that these studies and articles are all about how to shortcut your way to every outcome. How to have the maximum outcome from the minimum effort. That's no way to live your life. The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction one gains from working hard at something and getting to a goal can never be satisfied by shortcutting your way there.
A laboratory study also neglects to recognise the bio-psycho-social model. Sure, we MAY be able to gain the same outcome biologically from doing the minimum, but what about the mental health outcomes of training? If you had a really bad day and want to just be present and escape a cycle of negative thought, will 20 seconds of movement be useful? What about the social aspect? Almost all my friends and acquaintances I have met at the gym or by doing martial arts. Sometimes when I don’t feel like training, I feel like I’d be letting my training partners down if I didn’t show, so the social aspect increases adherence. So again, sure I might get the same physical outcome from an exercise snack, but is 20 seconds of gym attendance enough to develop friendships?
As I noted earlier, these exercise snack studies were also performed on sedentary populations. Sedentary people can go for a bike ride or increase their bench press because just the change of being active is allowing them access to new levels of performance. But as time rolls on, adaptation will occur and that will no longer work. Then volume will have to increase, training complexity will have to increase and they will end up having to do more than have an exercise snack anyway.
We also have to bear in mind one of the overarching principles of training: the specificity principle. We can only adapt to the stress we place ourselves under. If you perform sets of 20 squats at the gym, you will adapt to sets of 20. You won't be exceptional at a 1 rep max. So, in terms of specificity, you will adapt to an exercise snack and become useful at the 20 second activity burst. Yes, the studies showed similar aerobic improvements in HIIT as they did in exercise snacks, but bear in mind, as mentioned, this was on untrained participants only.
There is so much more to outcomes than a single aerobic metric. As always, the best approach here is to define an end goal, assess your start point and either hire a coach to work on a plan to traverse the two points or educate yourself to write a plan to do the same. Respect the process and enjoy the feeling of achievement when you reach your goal in the most honest way, without cutting corners.
I hope that has been useful for everyone, and if you have any questions about exercise snacks or coaching in general, email me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com or check out the Get-Fit Guy Facebook page!
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips, Adam Cecil, Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, and Davina Tomlin. I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the show notes in your podcast app.