No time for a gym workout? How short bursts of exercise – 4 or 5 minutes a day – can help protect against cancer, heart disease and more
- Four or five minutes a day of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity – Vilpa for short – may lower risk of cancers by up to 32 per cent, study says
- Routine activities can be made into a short exercise by tweaking their intensity. Pick up the pace when you walk; take the stairs when you can
If you have a gym membership but fail to use it – either regularly or at all – you’re not alone. According to fitness industry statistics, 67 to 80 per cent of people with a gym membership never go.
Our lives are busy, and finding 30 or 45 or 60 minutes a day, a few times a week, to get down to the gym is hard.
But here’s a little-known secret: there is tremendous value to incidental exercise – that is, the kind of exercise you do by accident, without really noticing and definitely without carving out a specific time for it or getting into Lycra to do it.
A recent study by University of Sydney researchers found that what they call “vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity” (Vilpa) – or what you might call short bursts of exercise – can provide great benefits, including lowering the risks of developing disease.
