Exercise

If you do not have a specific sport to specialise for, and instead wish to use exercise to optimise your healthspan, energy, functionality and general wellness, what should you ideally include within your programme?

Arguably, you will benefit by including exercise dedicated to all of these distinct outcomes.

***Balance and stability***

Helping you move and function whilst you are doing *everything* else, including exercise but also just everyday activity, and also significantly reducing your risk of slips, trips and falls, which are a major cause of health ruining injury.

How? For example through dedicated balance work, yoga, pilates, callisthenics.

***Strength***

Beyond aesthetics, the single biggest positive health intervention for most people is simply having more muscle mass. Muscle is an active endocrine organ, secreting health supporting myokines and acting as a huge sink for blood glucose and fats, helping you avoid insulin resistance and diabetes. It also keeps you highly functional as you age and reduces injury risk - less likely to fall, less likely to break something if you.

How? For example, through lifting weights, resistance bands, bodyweight work

***Aerobic Endurance***

Determining how long you can maintain mild to moderate exertion, so you can enjoy activities like swimming, hiking, paddle boarding, tennis, sports of many kinds.

How? Well sure, through swimming, hiking, paddle boarding . . . although you *can* also nail this one through elliptical training (you do not have to)

***Peak Aerobic Capacity***

Also known as VO2 max, & this means how fast and hard you can go for very brief intervals, like any kind of sprint. VO2 max itself is a strong predictor of overall health, lifespan and healthspan

How? Any VO2 focused training, ranging from tabata-style intervals to Norwegian 4x4, and many high-intensity interval training (HIIT) and REHIT protocols.

Within the scientific literature, exercise snacking or micro-dosing refers to the practice of brief and typically intense bouts of exercise. Think of a total duration of 1-5 minutes per snack, with several intervals of action and short rest, and with the exercise demanding enough to leave you relatively breathless.

Whilst not always the same, Sprint Interval Training (SIT), some High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) and Reduced Exertion High Intensity Interval Training (REHIIT) are specific approaches.

Human trials provide evidence that exercise snacking, including within already healthy, active individuals, can provide metabolic benefits, including improved VO2 max, aerobic and anaerobic performance.

Further benefit, if you snack before or after a meal, is of faster post-meal clearance of glucose and triglycerides (fat) from circulation.

Beyond the metabolic benefits, there are several practical advantages, including -

1. Being able to exercise when you otherwise could not, meaning different times, different spaces, and in different clothing i.e., no need to travel to a gym, change and shower

2. Breaking up periods of sedentary time, which even for active people remain as a risk factor for metabolic dysfunction and disease

3. Increase your total volume of exercise, which is useful for most people who are not hard-charging athletes

4. Enjoy (or endure) more intense individual sets. Research shows that longer rest breaks between sets enables more intense sets. This is usually referring to the minutes between lifting weights, but when you exercise snack, you are also practically taking very long breaks between "sets".

Some of the key papers used within this brief for further reading.

Effects of short sprint interval training on aerobic and anaerobic indices: A systematic review and meta-analysis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35090181/

Exercise Snacks: A Novel Strategy to Improve Cardiometabolic Health
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34669625/

Sprint exercise snacks: a novel approach to increase aerobic fitness
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30847639/