30 minutes of ‘exercise a day’.

“Right, shall I run, walk or cycle… I feel tired today, half an hour seems like a really long time, Coronation Street (long standing UK TV series for those of you who do not know about it) is on later and I don’t want to miss out, I need to cook dinner, oh forget it”.

We’ve all been in that situation, allocating time to be active can be extremely daunting and in some cases, not at all enjoyable. That’s why I’m such a fan of accumulation of activity. A principle that can be applied to increasing activity, increasing volume in your resistance program or even increasing the time spent with an annoying sibling!
Sometimes our tolerance of a stressor (whether the stressor be physical, such as activity, mental, social, financial or emotional) is reduced slightly, however for optimal health and wellbeing we know that we would ideally look to increase our TOTAL amount of time engaging in a certain activity. Therefore the use of shorter bouts of engagement may be beneficial.

Let’s focus on just activity for now, just so I don’t confuse myself, and everyone else in the process. Current research seems to point to the fact that total activity is fundamental to optimal health. Individuals that are more active on average live healthier, happier and longer lives. Therefore the focus needs to be placed on increasing total activity over time right? Not the amount of activity completed within half an hour.

In which case setting time aside for your total daily activity to be completed within a half an hour period seems to make little sense for those that don’t particularly enjoy engaging in structured activity. Perhaps shorter bouts may be preferable? A 10 minute walk to the shop in the morning followed by 5 minutes pottering around the garden plus another 10 minute walk to a friend’s house in the afternoon and another 10 minute walk home is 35 minutes, target hit.

In truth exercise is a daunting prospect for many, especially on days when symptoms relating to long term conditions are present, however coming up with techniques to accumulate active time provide an opportunity to reach goals without even realising you are doing so. As I’ve said before the key is in accumulating total time and improving the amount you do over a period of weeks, months and years.

The principle of accumulation is something I believe could help many but isn’t stressed enough in many circles, it’s not exercise, it’s activity. It may well be time to turn any negative associations to structured exercise that you may have into a positive lifestyle change towards increased activity.

Jack Barton (Researcher, Rescon Ltd)