Do mini-workouts count?

By Billy Brown

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Does a workout broken up into smaller parts during a busy day still reap the same benefits?

Life has a way of pushing your gym time aside. Some days are crazy. Some days you wake up knowing it just isn’t going to happen. That made us wonder: Can you stitch together a legitimate workout in little bursts throughout your day? Does grinding out 20 pushups every hour or a few jumping jacks between phone calls replace a 45-minute workout executed in one sweaty go?

We asked some top fitness experts to see whether you can skip a few nights at the gym and not completely lose your edge. Our finding: You have to be a little creative, but there's still a benefit to adding sporadic microbursts of physical exertion to your daily routine. "It's definitely better than nothing," says performance and conditioning coach David Jack, creator of the Men's Health 60-Day Transformation fitness DVD program. "It fills the gaps between training in the phases of your life when you're crushed with work or family stuff."

If you're stuck working an 80-hour work week , Jack says that taking a few minutes every hour or so will keep your mind fresh and your body engaged. "It'll keep you mentally and emotionally sound until you can bring your activity levels up again," he says.
In fact, you can do more than minimise the damage of sitting all day, says researcher Dr Eric Freese, who recently studied the benefits of sprint workouts for his dissertation at the University of Georgia. "It's possible for an athlete to maintain or even increase fitness using shorts bursts of energy," he says. Freese ran subjects through four 30-second bursts of all-out cycling sprints three days a week over a six-week period , starting at four sets and gradually increasing to eight sets. "We saw improvements across the board," Freese said. "Lowered triglyceride levels, increased mental energy, and improved overall mood as well."

Jack recommends stretching a workout into an entire day by accumulating repetitions. "Learn pushup variations by watching the movements on YouTube, then practicing each pushup for one minute each every hour," he says. "At the end of the day, you've got a few hundred pushups done."

Alternatively, do 30 seconds of a movement like jogging in place or jumping jacks, followed by 30 body weight squats, 30 pushups, and 30 chair dips every hour. Jack tried a variation on this workout every hour for eight hours. "The next morning, I knew I did something," he says. "It was volume. I got some lactate in my muscles." (Increased lactate production goes hand-in-hand with increased muscular exertion.)

Want to keep it simple? Run two flights of stairs every hour. "Stair-running is extremely challenging, but it's very short," Freese says. "If you do it hard, and do it fast, you'll see results." Over time, you'll see cardiovascular improvements and increased muscular endurance.
Keep in mind, however, that micro-workouts shouldn't be your permanent strategy. While you can maintain your fitness level and gain some new skills, it's not a long-term replacement for making time to work out outside the office. "If you can't set aside 20 minutes for you, then you have to have a bigger conversation with yourself," he says.

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