They improve mobility, productivity, and mentality.
Especially for those with desk jobs, movement has become largely limited to one place: the club. That's not how the human body was meant to function. “A couple of generations ago, work had a much more manual aspect to it,” says Matt Berenc, CSCS, director of education at the Equinox Fitness Training Institute in Beverly Hills. “People used their hands, built things, worked in factories.”
There was more activity at home, too, whether it meant walking from point A to point B rather than driving or doing physical labor around the house instead of outsourcing it. Movement was a constant from morning until night.
However, thanks to technology’s insurmountable influence on how people live and work today, it has been all but engineered out of daily life.
“We've tried to make everything as comfortable as possible,” Berenc says. Instead of walking across the office to ask your co-worker a question, you email or Slack them. Elevators are often favored over stairs. Even groceries are delivered to doorsteps.
One of the biggest issues that develops as a result is adaptive shortening, Berenc explains. It’s the process in which you lose certain ranges of motion because staying sedentary tells your body you no longer need to move so deeply.
It manifests mostly as tight hips and shoulders. “When you sit at a desk all day with your hips in a flexed position, those tissues shorten,” he says. Same goes for the musculature around your shoulders, as you naturally round forward toward whatever screen commands your attention. Over time, this translates to a significant drop in mobility.
Spending an hour working out each day is not enough to counteract the effects. “It’s crucial to dedicate time to higher-intensity, goal-oriented work in the club, but you also need other elements of physical challenge,” Berenc says.
Enter movement snacks: quick, semi-planned bursts of exercise throughout the day. They need only last two to six minutes to give you mental and physical benefits. “It’s all about breaking out of the habit of constantly staying in one position,” Berenc says. “The body thrives on variety, so it’s worthwhile to satisfy its natural desire to move in different ways whenever possible.”
Quick bouts of exercise also trigger autophagy, notes Equinox Health Advisory Board member Pamela Peeke, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. The process rids your body of cellular debris and stimulates the production of stem cells, the primary regenerative cells in your body. The growing awareness of this benefit explains in part why she predicts micro-HIIT will take off in 2020.
Here, three ways to add movement snacks to your days for improved mobility, increased productivity, and a happier outlook. To make them stick, stack your snacks with other everyday habits, like filling your water bottle or brushing your teeth.
Create a mini EMOM.
For people who work at home, in a relaxed open-floor setting, or in the privacy of an office, Berenc recommends performing three compound exercises, each during a five-minute EMOM routine. For example, your first EMOM session (say, at 10 a.m.) could consist of 15 squats at the top of every minute, your second (at noon) could be 15 plank holds with spinal rotations, and your third (at 3 p.m.) could be 15 mountain climbers. Complete all reps of the indicated exercise at the top of every minute and use what’s left in each to recover.
Make it to 100.
Aim to complete 100 reps of a single exercise throughout the day, suggests Philip Deer, manager of education at the Equinox Fitness Training Institute in Beverly Hills. To keep track, draw 10 boxes on a sticky note and cross one off for every 10 reps. Any bodyweight or plyometric move will do.
Get creative with stairs.
“Whenever I’m in the office, I’ll get up and walk at least three flights of stairs once an hour,” Berenc says. Don’t limit yourself to the sagittal plane, taking each step as you normally would. Move laterally up the stairs with your right or left side leading the way, or step each foot out to the side (as if you’re doing a skater) instead of straight up. Do this anytime you leave your desk. “At the end of the day, you’ll realize you’ve done a full workout,” Berenc says.