With so much of our lives tied to screens and office chairs, finding the time and space to get up and move can be challenging—especially if your schedule is jam-packed with meetings, travel commitments, and family time. Even more challenging is the impact of a sedentary lifestyle on health: Research suggests prolonged sitting and low energy expenditure is linked to higher risks of chronic diseases, mood disorders, and mortality. From a work perspective, it’s not great either: Long periods of inactivity can lead to feeling sluggish, unmotivated, and distracted.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly a third of adults aren’t getting enough physical activity to combat the negative physical and mental health impacts of a more sedentary lifestyle. So, whether you have a specific fitness goal in mind or simply want to introduce more movement into your daily life, here are some ways you can work in more workouts to get your blood pumping around your busy schedule.
1 STAIR CLIMBING
Rather than taking the elevator or an escalator, take the stairs at every opportunity you get. It may slightly extend your travel time between locations, but every step burns approximately four times as many calories as walking on flat ground (a flight of 12 steps typically burns five calories), and fast climbing can burn twice or even three times as many calories as slow climbing.
2 ACTIVE MEETINGS
Rather than taking calls at your desk, go for a walk and talk. Fresh air offers additional mental and physical health benefits, but even if you can’t get outside, walking around the office is still better than slumping in the desk chair. If you need to stay in one area or have easy access to note-taking supplies, marching in place can work, too.
3 WAIT-TIME MOVES
Even the most rushed of days feature some momentary pauses in activity, like when the coffee is brewing, you’re waiting in line for your lunch order, or you have five minutes to kill in between meetings. If you don’t need those moments to close your eyes and breathe deeply, you can use them for quick bodyweight exercises like squats or calf raises.
4 DESK FITNESS
If you’re definitively tied to your desk for the day, use it to your advantage. Build in sets of things like chair squats, tricep dips, oblique twists, seated leg raises, or desk push-ups in between meetings. Do neck and shoulder rolls, overhead stretching, and arm circles to stretch and improve mobility. If you need something more subtle—say, during a call—you can even contract and relax different muscles one at a time for some isometric muscle strengthening.
5 FULL-BODY MOVES
Maximize limited activity time with short sets (30–60 seconds at a time) of high-intensity movements that activate lots of different parts of your body. Burpees, lunge presses, squat jumps, mountain climbers, jumping jacks, and high knees are all great options for getting your heart rate up quickly while toning muscles, and they don’t require much space to execute.
6 RESISTANCE BAND EXERCISES
Portable, affordable, and versatile, exercise bands are a great accessory to have on hand wherever your work takes you. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and resistance levels, and they can be used to fire up just above every major muscle group, from arms, back, shoulders, and chest to hips, legs, glutes, and abs. Exercises like lateral pull ups, bicep curls, wood chops, and standing core twists are good places to start.
7 DANCE BREAKS
Sometimes anything that feels too much like a workout feels like too much effort when you’re already running around all day. Putting on your favorite song or two and dancing it out not only offers a great release of pressure but also emphasizes fun and freedom over strict training concepts. While you may not feel comfortable rocking out in the office (power to you if you do!), working from home or a hotel room offers a prime opportunity to get down during any down time.
8 SWAP IN A STABILITY BALL
Exchanging your desk chair for a stability ball can engage your core and promote both more natural spine alignment and better posture through subtle balancing movements. Just make sure to limit the swap to 30 minutes a day, as stability balls lack the support your back needs long term. If you’re just getting started with exercise snacking, treat it like any new habit and remember to give yourself some grace and practice consistency. Short, high-intensity bouts of activity are easier to maintain than long, frequent gym sessions, and that regular maintenance is key to seeing progress in your health, focus, productivity, and mood.
