How to take advantage of a free moment and take care of yourself? Do a micro workout! |

What are micro workouts?

If until now you associated exercises with hours spent on tiring the body with various forms of extinction, you will be very surprised when you learn about the idea of ​​micro-training. They consist in choosing any physical activity and devoting it time in your free time – micro training sessions can last from one minute – up to fifteen minutes maximum. So these are short activities that do not require a lot of time, micro-training sessions can be performed several times a day, which will give the body a dose of healthy movement.

Examples of micro training

There are endless ways to do micro workouts: this could be getting up from your chair every hour (if you’re working at the computer) and doing 20 ass-to-grass (ATG) deep squats. You can make burpees (“crocodile clips” in Polish) several times in a row after an hour of standing still. You can invest in buying a bar for the door frame and pull yourself up with a special rubber several times a day. After a few months of these inconspicuous and short forms of exercise, the body will grow stronger imperceptibly without the heavy effort associated with traditional forms of training, lasting about an hour.

Here are other examples of exercises that can be used in micro training:

• rompers,
• arm waving,
• dynamic stretching of the body,
• push-ups at the wall,
• plank or «board»,
• lunges,
• exercises with resistance bands,
• walking up the stairs,
• dance,
• several yoga poses,
• wymachy kettlebellem,
• short exercise sessions with weights,
• jumping rope,
• or even a quick stroll to the store for rolls or Brussels sprouts 😉

There are really many possibilities of micro-training sessions. It all depends on your creativity. Whenever you have the time and opportunity to do something good for your body, move on. Remember that man has never led a sedentary lifestyle, as we can now observe. Micro training sessions that start up several times a day contribute to imitating the lifestyle of our ancestors who were active for a large part of the day.

7 benefits of micro training that you can’t ignore!

• TIME! You can make them anywhere at any time of the day. During this type of activity, you do not even have to change to sports clothes. By doing micro training, you will not sweat as during an intense, long workout lasting several dozen minutes. You will also save time that you would waste commuting to the gym or exercising at home for an hour.

  For people with a deficit of free time, for professionally active mothers who have a limited amount of time for themselves – micro training is a great alternative and can be a pretty good replacement for 30-minute or one-hour training sessions.

  Micro workouts can be adapted to your round-the-clock rhythm: five minutes to boot up before going to work – it can be a series of three exercises of your choice. If you haven’t done this before, don’t make your plans too ambitious. It is supposed to be short but pleasant. Decide on exercises that bring you satisfaction.

  If someone likes these “exercise snacks”, then at work, he may also click several rounds of 10 squats with an interval of, for example, two hours, or even every hour. After you come home and rest, you can have a few short sessions of small sports activities in the meantime, lasting from one to several minutes.

  For the constantly busy, this model of training can be a remedy for the excuse entitled “I don’t have time to exercise.”

• NO FATIGUE! If the workouts are too long and done too frequently, they can lead to exhaustion. Sometimes it’s fun to beat yourself up if you like, but you have to know that the body needs time to recover. By doing a very intense workout, be it at home or in the gym, the risk of painful soreness over the next few days increases. This is really not a necessary component of a well-done workout.

  More and more professional sports trainers are departing from this type of training in order not to get their pupils and spare them unnecessary pain or injury. Fortunately, the idea of ​​”no pain, no gain” (no pain, no benefit) is forgotten. Now he trains with respect for his body. Micro training sessions do not burden the body and do not cause exhaustion, so they can be successfully used 7 days a week.

  Even people who work out for an hour at the gym, on days off from fitness classes, weave several short micro-training sessions to the rhythm of their day, without the risk of overtraining.

• YOU SIT LESS! By incorporating micro workouts into your daily schedule and doing them several times a day, you will prevent long periods of motionlessness. Sitting is called new smoking and is very unfavorable and very unhealthy for our body. Any form of stillness that lasts too long is not a natural state for humans. Our ancestors moved much more compared to modern man who made friends with a comfortable armchair. Micro workouts are called by their enthusiasts “workout snacks” and are a great way to prevent you from getting rusty 😉

  Perhaps you are one of the people called “active couch potato” – an active couch potato, who play sports once a day or several times a week for about an hour, but most of the day they sit without even moving their toes. Scientists warn that such a model of functioning does not protect these people from diseases accompanying a sedentary lifestyle.

  Long-term sitting without exercise snacks increases insulin resistance, which is known to promote weight gain. Our bodies are designed to move, not to sit for hours. Remember that not only calories have an impact on fat loss during weight loss, but also the proper hormonal balance of the body. Movement should not be associated only with burning calories, because its main advantage is sensitizing cells to insulin. This aspect is especially important for people with diabetes, pre-diabetes and insulin resistance.

• YOU ACCELERATE METABOLISM AND FAT BURNING! Professor Edward F. Coyle of the University of Texas at Austin conducted a study in which he observed the impact of short 4-second sprints on a bicycle, carried out five times an hour with periods of regular breaks. The total duration of the study is 8 hours. It turned out that even such a short period of very intense exercise as four seconds improved fat metabolism and reduced the amount of triglycerides in the blood among the participants of the experiment. 4 seconds of HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training, was enough to balance the harmful effects of sitting for too long. Professor Coyle proved in his experiment that only 20 seconds of exercise per hour and a total of 160 seconds (just over 3 minutes) a day brings metabolic benefits comparable to longer exercise of less intensity, such as walking slowly.

  Admittedly, during the experiment, a special stationary bike with a heavy flywheel was used for short intervals, but the scientists suggest that we can obtain similar metabolic benefits by interrupting too long sitting with intense effort on an ordinary stationary bike, training a little longer than 4 seconds 5 times per hour. You can also run in place or sprint up stairs. Any form of short, vigorous effort is a good remedy for long periods of inactivity. Professor Coyle emphasizes that the key thing in fat metabolism is muscle activation.

  Burning calories in short training sessions is not high, being around 40 to 50 calories in a 4-minute workout, but if you manage to raise your heart rate and accelerate your heart rate above your resting heart rate, your calorie burning capacity will improve throughout the day. This effect is called EPOC, for excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. It is also commonly referred to as afterburn. In short, it is that after a very intense effort, your body works at increased speed, even for more than a day, because it needs to regenerate, and the repair processes are very energy-consuming. As a result, you burn more calories than normal as your body speeds up its metabolic rate by taking in extra oxygen. And what do you think? Prefer to spend long hours sluggishly pedaling or tramping on the treadmill, but will you rock out once in a while?

• PHISICAL COMFORT! This is the part devoted to lazy people. We all have moments when we just DON’T WANT. A sofa or a soft armchair call like sirens Odysseus, the body clings willingly and uses this form of relaxation without opposition. OK, if this is a well deserved rest – no problem – lie down and have fun during the siesta.

  Worse if it is just another day spent motionless. It is always worthwhile to use the 4 letters for health. You know that, as if you decide that you will finally start someday, but just forcing yourself to get up and do the training often requires a huge amount of mental strength. Especially in the sunless months, when our internal energy is close to zero, motivating to move is a difficult task.

  Micro workouts can be a great panacea for lack of inspiration for exercise. You don’t need that long to make them, just one minute every once in a while. Micro training is also a micro-level motivation. The psychological barrier in the form of reluctance to exercise will be easier to overcome, knowing that your training will last a maximum of 5 minutes, not 50.

• ZERO STRESS! Excessive physical activity can overproduce the stress hormone cortisol. Its excess that persists for a long time can adversely affect our body. Cortisol raises blood sugar levels (primary response: fight or flight), and when someone is insulin resistant, too much exercise will be a stressor that blocks fat burning.

  Micro training sessions may include very vigorous forms of movement, but they are short enough not to cause a stress response in the body and cortisol release. In addition, if someone does them 3 to 5 times, 10 minutes each, with a break of several hours during the day – the body will have time to regenerate.

  Not everyone likes to get tired for 50 minutes in a row during intense exercise. This is also good news for people who are negative about training in general. If you care about body health and muscle maintenance, which is extremely important above the age of 5, you can start with micro exercise. XNUMX minutes a day at the beginning won’t do you that much harm, and it can bring you great benefits.

• DEVELOPING A NEW HABIT! Moving is healthy. Everyone knows it, and sometimes it’s so hard to get up from a comfortable couch. Perhaps some people think that just walking and being active at home while cleaning or cooking is enough. This also counts, of course, but at a certain age it is not enough to keep the body healthy for many years. Sarcopenia eats unused muscles over time. Workouts with your own body or weights are a great remedy for the loss of valuable muscle tissue.

  Health experts advise you to do 150 minutes of moderate physical activity per week, which gives you 21 minutes a day or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise, and dividing it into 7 days of the week is about 11 minutes a day. Is it really a lot to do something good for yourself?

  Thanks to the idea of ​​micro training, we can divide this time into even smaller segments. Even if you haven’t exercised at all so far, if you start with 5 minutes once a day, you will do a 35-minute workout a week. It’s probably better than nothing. On a monthly basis, it will be just over 2 hours of exercise. If we look at it from the perspective of a year, it turns out that you practiced 28 hours.

  By spending 5 minutes a day on an activity that you have avoided so far, you can develop a new, healthy habit. In the long run, increasing the frequency to four 5-minute micro-workouts per day may prove to be easier than you thought. If you could achieve this from the level of total couch laziness, you would be moving the recommended 20 minutes a day for your health. Think about this tactic, but don’t think too long. 5 minutes of fitness at the beginning won’t hurt you so badly that you endure agony. The point is to start, even with small steps – that is, micro training.

  If these micro exercises become a habit and you start doing them several times a day, the positive cumulative effect of the exercises will save your body from the negative factors resulting from lack of exercise and too long periods of inactivity.

Get started today. Do swmy micro workout!

Perhaps this article will help the undecided and unmotivated to get up from a comfortable armchair and do something for themselves, for their health. I wish us all pleasant moments of activity. Get up, move on, micro training is waiting for you!