Micro-workouts have started gaining traction as people work to fit regular activity into their busy lives.

While high intensity interval training (H.I.I.T.) has offered people a way to obtain a great workout in less time, it still requires you to dedicate a specific block of 20 to 30 minutes to your workout. Within that time, you’ll push yourself hard and get sweaty. As a result, it requires most people to take time to prepare for it and to recover from it – to catch their breath and possibly to shower and change because things get sweaty.

Micro-Workouts as H.I.I.P.A.

While H.I.I.T. does offer an opportunity for a great workout in less time than a typical gym session, it’s still too much commitment for many people who live very busy lives and who simply can’t fit things in on a regular basis. Fortunately, micro-workouts have been found to be just as beneficial to health and weight loss, provided they’re done properly and frequently enough.

These micro-workouts are also known as high intensity incidental physical activity (H.I.I.P.A.). These are made up of everyday types of activities that keep you active for short periods of time, but that are intense enough to raise your heart rate and respiration rate. This includes climbing up stairs, carrying groceries and other daily activities that can have you sweating in five minutes or less.

How to Get Fit with Micro-Workouts

Using H.I.I.P.A. for micro workouts that will help you to boost your fitness is easier than you may think. This is also often considered to be a fantastic entry-level workout for people who have been primarily sedentary for quite some time.

Researchers who have examined this method of regular workouts have said that people who are out of shape or who are overweight can use micro-workouts to add meaningful fitness into their routines. Even if you’re just raising your heart rate and breathing quickly for a minute or two, it has a helpful impact on your health, particularly when you’re doing it several times per day.

For this reason, choosing to take the stairs, to get up at least once per hour (though ideally once every half hour) for even thirty seconds to a minute of intense exercise, can make all the difference to getting in shape.

Great micro-workouts include power-walking instead of strolling, taking the stairs instead of the escalator, getting up and running on the spot as fast as you can for thirty seconds every thirty minutes, doing jumping jacks during commercial breaks, and other tiny workouts that virtually every schedule can afford.