Exercise snacks. And as the name suggests, this is a fun one. And was suggested by Dr. Andy Galpin as a way to either enhance or maintain your fitness depending on how your core or foundational fitness program is going. So when I say core, I don't mean your abs. I mean, whether or not you're getting your regular cardio and your regular resistance training.

If you were to add one or several of these exercise snacks per week, it can further improve things like VO2 max, muscular endurance, et cetera. I'll talk about the specific snacks that you will be doing in a moment. However, as Dr. Andy Galpin also pointed out, there are times in which we happen to not be following our foundational fitness program, either because work demands or family demands or we're traveling.

We're simply not keeping up with our basic routine. And under those conditions, exercise snacks are a terrific way to maintain the fitness that you've already built and developed. And you don't lose any ground in a week, say, where you get particularly busy. Now, exercise snacks can take on a variety of different forms, but for sake of simplicity and clarity, today we're going to divide them into two major categories.

The first category are exercise snacks that are going to improve or maintain your cardiovascular fitness, so your ability to run or cycle or row some distance, say, 12 minutes or longer, okay? But keep in mind, these exercise snacks are very, very brief. They don't require that you do them for 12 minutes or longer.

What they're going to do is either maintain or enhance the type of endurance that allows you to continue in an activity for 12 minutes or longer. The second category of exercise snack relates to muscular endurance. Muscular endurance is a very important aspect of fitness. And even though some people are already training for muscular endurance, it's something that most people are not doing enough training for.

Muscular endurance is your ability, say, to maintain a wall sit or to maintain a plank or to do the maximum number of push-ups that you can do in one session, the sort of, you know, drop to the floor and give me as many push-ups as you possibly can type of thing, or as many sit-ups as you can type of thing.

Muscular endurance translates to a number of other aspects of fitness, and it's something that we should all be working on. And again, many people just don't make space for it in their regular routine. So now we have these two categories of exercise snacks, one geared toward enhancing or maintaining your cardiovascular fitness as it translates to longer duration endurance activity, so 12 minutes or longer.

And then the other category is purely muscular endurance, which is essentially some bout of exercise that's going to be fairly brief, anywhere from a minute to two minutes, but certainly less than 12 minutes. Okay, so let me give you an example of an exercise snack for enhancing your long duration endurance, 12 minutes or longer.

And this is the sort of thing that if you're going to incorporate into your routine, and I highly recommend that you do, can essentially be done anytime with no warmup. A good example of an exercise snack of this type would be to suddenly stand up from your desk and to do a hundred jumping jacks.

Now, depending on how fit you are and how fast you do those jumping jacks and how wide and tall you do those jumping jacks, meaning are you doing these kind of little things where your hands don't actually meet and you're parting your legs just a little bit, or are you doing full jumping jacks where you're really jumping and setting your feet out as wide as you comfortably and safely can and then bring your hands together, it could take you anywhere from 30 seconds to 90 seconds.

Okay, so in the case of jumping jacks, you may end up doing this for 90 seconds, but the point is to simply do a hundred jumping jacks. Or if that takes too long, you can even do just 25 or 50 jumping jacks. The point is that it's going to get you moving your muscles.

It's going to get your heart rate up. Even if you're very, very fit, if you're doing these fast enough and you're doing them with proper form, it's going to get your heart rate up and then you're done. You can sit back down to your desk or you can continue to walk through the airport.

Yes, I've done these in the airport, typically not while walking toward my gate, but at the gate. But occasionally I'm feeling lethargic or I haven't had the opportunity to train that day. And perhaps I won't get the opportunity to train. So I'll do something like a hundred jumping jacks while facing the window.

So it feels a little less awkward facing people while you're doing them. And of course you don't have to do jumping jacks. An equally effective type of exercise snack is to find a stairwell and to simply go up that stairwell as fast as you safely can for 20 to 30 seconds.

So perhaps just find the bottom of a stairwell and go up that stairwell as quickly as you can. And perhaps go down as quickly as you can. And just keep doing that for about 20 to 40 seconds. And then you're essentially done. You could also opt to pick some distance away from your car in the parking lot, assuming you're not carrying any heavy bags or anything, and simply run to your car.

So 20 to 30 seconds of not necessarily all out sprinting. You don't want to injure yourself because again, this is done without a warmup. These exercise snacks are designed to be inserted into your day and into your week, essentially at random. You could plan them if you want, but anytime you feel inspired or perhaps anytime you're feeling like you don't want to do one, you could simply do one of these exercise snacks.

And of course doing jumping jacks or running to your car or taking the stairs very quickly up and down or just up and then walking down, for instance, and doing a few jumping jacks, things of that sort, of course can take on a near infinite number of different variations.

So if you don't like any of the variations that I just presented, you can easily come up with something else. Again, the purpose of these exercise snacks is to get your heart rate up. It's of course to do this while not getting injured. And it is entirely compatible with an existing exercise program.

It in no way is going to impede your performance in strength or hypertrophy or other forms of long-form endurance or high-intensity interval training, quite to the contrary. Everything we know about these exercise snacks is that they enhance various aspects of your physiology in ways that promote both recovery and performance in your other types of exercise and your other types of athletic endeavors.

So no reason to think that they are going to be problematic for your training, but of course, don't trip, don't fall, don't undertake a movement that puts you into a range of motion that has you hurting your back or your knee or any other part of your body. You know, start off slowly and find something that really works for you.

So these are very easy. They take very little time. They're fun, to be honest. And as was discussed in the conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin, they're also very effective. you