This Week’s Thrive In Five Is About The Health Benefits of 10-Minutes of Movement
Thrive In Five tips are something I can impart in 5 minutes or less, that you can think about or implement in 5 minutes or less. This week’s tip is all about movement and specifically the health benefits of 10-minutes of movement.
Now I understand there’s nothing revolutionary about talking about movement for health and wellbeing. We know we need to do it. You’re probably struggling to find time to do as much exercise and movement as you’d like to do, but you don’t necessarily need to do a lot.
What impact can as little as 10-minutes of brisk walking have?
Now I’ve talked a lot about minimal effective dose talked a lot about movement snacking, but let me share with you a study, which was conducted across a broad range of participants. What the study found was when participants did a 10-minute brisk walk a day, their overall mood and energy increased for up to two hours afterwards.
So that’s a huge return on investment, just 10 minutes of brisk walking gets you two hours of feeling good and feeling energised. Imagine you can funnel that feeling good and feeling energised into your work and to homeschooling, into anything that you need to get done within your life.
It can be really quite powerful.
What are the longer-term health benefits of 10-minutes of movement?
Now the same study also found that when participants did a 10-minute brisk walk every day for three weeks or longer, the overall increase in mood and energy lasted all day.
So all you need to do in theory is a brisk 10 minutes of movement, perhaps a walk or something else, a day to get that upswing in mood and energy.
Now, of course, you can take your family with you. It’s a great opportunity to give the dog whistle around.
Personally, I’d be looking to bookend my day with 10-minutes of movement. So maybe at the beginning and the end of the day, or you use it as a wedge. So you use that 10-minutes of movement to literally drive a wedge between perhaps your morning and your lunch break, or in between two pieces of work. Or just as an opportunity to stop and reflect and move on to the next thing. Rather than going bang, bang, bang, bang into all the different things that you’re doing.
Health is a long game, making small incremental but consistent change can have a huge overall impact.
So that’s this week’s tip, but please do consider little pockets of movement. If you can get that 10-minutes of movement done, and enjoy that increased mood and that increased energy. That’s it from me, stay healthy all the best for now.
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