This Week’s Thrive In Five Launches our Movement Snacking Month
One of the big questions that people have is how can I get my energy? How can I be more mobile and get more movement into a working day? That for many of you, will be relatively sedentary. Movement snacking is a partial solution to getting more energy, improving your mood and getting your body moving. This month, we are bringing to you a series of three videos, all about movement snacking.
What is a movement snack?
A movement snack is a little pocket of movement, just a minute of movement every hour. For example:
- You might get out of your chair and you may do some squats. So up and down in the squat position.
- You may go up and down your stairs a few times.
- You might go out into the garden, get some natural light while you do three laps of the garden and come back in.
Sometimes I do pushups. Sometimes I do lunges. Sometimes I use my kettlebell. It doesn’t matter what you use. It could be a bag of spuds, a young child, or just your body weight. The purpose is just to get up and do that little slither of movement, ideally every hour.
So on an eight-hour workday, I might be doing eight minutes of movement snacking across the day. But the unexpected benefit is this is actually pretty good for your fitness as well.
What are the health and wellbeing benefits of movement snacking?
You might think “what a minute is good for my fitness?!”, but it can be…
If you think, in that minute, you might do 10 bodyweight squats, for example, over the course of an eight hour day, that’s 80 squats. Which you’d be delighted with if you’ve gone to a gym to do them specifically. So it all adds up, it’s sneaky little reps that add up.
Movement Snack Challenge
So movement snacking is the big theme for this month. For the next three videos, Liz and I are going to bring you examples of what you can do to stay active. But feel free to carve out your own ideas and do those. But the trick is just to get it done and get it done consistently because that’s everything.
So join us in movement snacking every day this month, set a reminder, add an alert to your phone, pop a note in your diary. Whatever works for you but most importantly enjoy, and have fun.
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