It’s time to embrace incidental exercise. What's that? The everyday activity you do that’s beneficial to your health. An new paper in the British Journal of Sports shows that even in short bursts, regular incidental exercise has a number of health benefits.
Like HIIT, high intensity interval training, it can lead to improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness which can help improve the function of the lungs, the heart and the circulatory systems. What’s more, swapping two minutes of sitting per hour for normal walking cuts your risk of death by a third if done regularly.
What’s considered incidental exercise? Here are some examples:
- Taking the stair instead of the elevator
- Walking instead of driving
- Walking uphill
- Standing instead of sitting at work
- Walking your dog
- Stretching while watching TV
- Parking your car further from the location you are going