The difference short bursts of movement can make

When it comes to physical fitness, I’ve felt for a long time that those mundane movements that happen throughout one’s day are more important than many researchers and fitness gurus seem to realize. In my world, walking from one room to another room counts for something. Indeed, one of my favorite pieces of advice (part of my Frugalmatic Starter Kit) is to embrace what I call the “double-back.” The double-back happens when you walk from one room to another room, only to realize you must return to the previous room to grab something that you forgot or didn’t realize you needed. For example, let’s say you take a sandwich into the living room, sit down, but then realize you forgot to grab milk. This realization requires you to get up, return to the kitchen, and pour a cup of milk. After that, you walk back to the living room to your sandwich, which hopefully no one ate. Whew! I’ll talk more about the double-back later, but the point is that these short bursts of movement serve a purpose. They can benefit our health.

I follow various studies about physical fitness, and a good number of them are about the benefits of what would be considered traditional exercise. They love to recommend that people go on walks, which of course is a good thing. But rarely do these studies apply to the kinds of small movements that might result from performing mundane household tasks.

Potential health benefits from short bursts of movement

Which is why I found interesting a new study on the potential benefits of short bursts of physical activity. The study found that climbing stairs or walking for as little as 10 seconds burns a surprising amount of energy. The study sought to separate the amount of energy it takes to move continuously versus moving for brief periods. The study’s author, Dr. Francesco Luciano of the University of Milan, said his study found that the body requires more energy to initiate a movement and less energy to move continuously. “We found that walking in shorter bouts requires more energy—and more oxygen—to cover the same distance, compared to covering it continuously. It’s like a car using more fuel during the first few kilometers,” he told The Times in London.

A few other recent studies also speak to the significance of these short bursts of movement. Several months ago, I interviewed a researcher from the University of Sydney, Dr. Emmanuel Stamatakis, who studies incidental physical activity, which includes all of our non-exercise movements. (Another researcher, Dr. James Levine, calls this type of movement non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT.) One of Dr. Stamatakis’ most recent studies found that as little as one-and-a-half minutes of vigorous incidental physical activity each day lowered the risk of heart failure among women by 40% and all types of cardiovascular disease by 30%. That’s a huge benefit for a tiny amount of work.

The idea that short bursts of movements can be beneficial is exciting from the standpoint that it means many of us shouldn’t have to significantly alter our daily routines to gain these health benefits. Ten seconds, for a lot of people, might mean the length of time it takes them to walk from the bedroom to the basement. It’s very doable!

The challenge in helping people to learn to move more

While these new studies offer good news, a problem is that everyone’s daily routine is unique and contains opportunities to move that others cannot replicate, even if they wanted to. For example, when I iron my dress shirts, I grab the ironing board and iron in our basement. I haul those two items upstairs and then I return to the basement to grab a jug of distilled water (for a grand total of four trips up and down the stairs) for the steam iron. I also hunt down hangars in the bedroom and my wrinkled dress shirts. Yes, this setup is more inconvenient than it has to be, but I’m being intentional in seeking to add a dose of physical activity to my day.

But can you imagine a doctor or physical trainer actually recommending this ironing routine as a legitimate way for millions of people to move more? Of course not.

One of the reasons it’s so difficult to communicate how to become more physically active is that everybody will have a different reason for needing to move throughout their home, whether it’s traveling the basement stairs or moving from one room to another. Most of the advice from researchers and doctors is generalized because people’s daily routines are so varied. Doctors might advise patients to walk more, but they cannot easily examine your home’s setup and analyze daily routines to figure out how an individual might walk more while accomplishing routine, household tasks.

Why the physically active mindset is so important

Ultimately, it’s up to each one of us to figure out how to pepper our daily routines with more short bursts of movement. To do this, it’s helpful to develop what I call the physically active mindset. When you have a physically active mindset, the numerous ways you can add more movement to your day become more readily apparent. You will be able to spot these opportunities and act on them in a way tailored to your own daily routine. You won’t be seeking out ideas for moving more but will learn to create them yourself.

Just keep in mind, these opportunities might sound a bit silly when trying to describe them to someone else, like my description of walking to the kitchen for a glass of milk that you forgot to initially grab when you brought your sandwich into the living room. Yet, it is these types of seemingly insignificant events that, in my opinion, make for a truly physically active life, at least if repeated throughout the day and carried into different settings, including at work.

The physically active mindset embraces tasks that other mindsets dismiss as burdens or inconveniences. I’ll admit that I don’t love the “double-back.” But rather than become irritated when I need to walk across our home to grab some necessary item, I simply tell myself that the double-back is an opportunity to move more. And that’s a good thing.

With small bursts, it’s a ‘penny earned, penny saved’ situation

When we talk about the value of these short bursts of movement, it’s important to view them in their totality. It’s kind of like that old saying, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” A handful of pennies saved isn’t much, but if you’re saving your pennies each hour and each day over a period of weeks and years, it starts to add up. Something similar can be said about movement. A single trip up and down your basement stairs doesn’t make for a physically active lifestyle. But if you’re finding many different ways to add movement to your day, you are forming a physically active lifestyle, or at least you’re that much closer to forming one.