Short workouts daily could deliver long-term benefits

By Patricia Hagen
The Indianapolis Star

If a 30-minute exercise session never finds a spot in your schedule, you might try for 10 minutes.

Researchers have found that exercising little-by-little is better than not exercising at all. It all adds up.

Accumulating several 10-minute periods of moderate-intensity exercise in a day has almost the same health benefits as 30 continuous minutes — the recommended daily adult requirement.

And, researchers say, people are more likely to stick to an exercise program if they're only required to do short workouts.

Ten minutes at a time is a relatively easy, effective way to launch an exercise program, says John Jakicic, an associate professor at the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at Brown University Medical School in Providence, R.I.

The approach is ideal for those who haven't been exercising much ("sedentary" is the researchers' term) and want to get going with an exercise program, Jakicic says. "It's designed for people who say, 'I don't have the time' or 'I'm just not motivated.' "

Sound familiar?

In one of Jakicic's studies, the subjects (overweight, sedentary women) were instructed to exercise for 10 minutes three times a day.

A typical participant did some exercise in the morning before work and then took a short walk at lunchtime. "In many cases, all of it got done," he says.

Many of the study participants started to feel successful when they managed several mini workouts a day, Jakicic says. "They started to believe in themselves."

After getting used to 10-minute workouts, some added five minutes to their sessions. "They started using it as a building block" to more frequent and/or longer exercise sessions, says Jakicic, one of the authors of the American College of Sports Medicine's new position paper on how to lose weight and keep it off.

While study participants were allowed to choose any kind of aerobic — moderate intensity — activity to fulfill the requirement, 75 percent chose walking.

The walking has to be brisk to have the desired cardiovascular fitness effects. "Walk as if you're going to miss the bus. Walk with a purpose," Jakicic says.

Then you should add strength and flexibility exercises to round out your fitness program, he says.

Other studies found benefits of brief or intermittent exercise:

• A small study of female college students, reported in Health Psychology magazine, found that "exercising even for a short period each day may improve mood."

Ten minutes of pedaling on an exercise bicycle was enough to improve overall mood, as well as increase vigor and decrease fatigue. Mood was not further improved by 20 or 30 minutes of exercise, the researchers found.

• The American Council on Exercise Web site — acefitness.com — cites a study in Preventive Medicine that found some exercise is better than nothing.

"For sedentary people, even a few minutes of daily stair-climbing — a vigorous but easily accessible form of exercise — can improve cardiovascular health."