As athletes we are great at having our training program mapped out and sticking to it.
But what happens the rest of the day? What do our movement patterns look like during the work day when we tend to be sedentary? What might this mean for our overall health regardless of our daily training?
Even though we are athletes, we are also regular people with busy lives, many stressors, and health concerns. I am a firm believer that there are no quick-fixes for putting in the effort with our health behaviors, but some recent research makes me think that maybe it doesn’t all have to be so hard.
What was studied?
The study, published in Jan 2023, aimed to examine the effects of movement breaks in sedentary behavior on heart health and to evaluate if there are differences in time frequencies of the movement breaks. Each participant was evaluated during an 8 hour sedentary period with various frequency and duration of walking breaks: 5 minutes of walking every 30 minutes of sitting, 1 min every 30 min, 5 min every 1 hour, 1 min every 1 hour. Results were compared across each condition and to baseline during 8 hours of sitting.
Movement breaks improved health markers
The results showed improvements in blood pressure, blood glucose control, fatigue and mood disturbances. Most remarkably, the people who moved for 5 minutes after 30 minutes of sitting reduced blood glucose response to large meals by about 60%! They also found that moving every hour for one minute is enough to lower blood pressure.
However, due to the limitations of this study: small in size (11 participants), interrupted by COVID-19, only studied healthy people, the researchers went on to conduct another, larger study in partnership with NPR. This latest study hopes to answer more questions about the benefits of movement breaks and what is the lowest frequency and duration to see health results over a longer period of time and with a larger population and diversity of participants.
The new study
Unfortunately, the results have yet to be published, but one of the researchers shared some preliminary findings on this episode and others throughout the first season of the Body Electric pod.
There were 20,000 people who signed up to participate in movement breaks for two weeks. Each person opted into the group that seemed most feasible to them: moving 5 minutes every 30 minutes, 5 minutes every 1 hour, or 5 minutes every 2 hours.
Everyone had improved fatigue levels, increased positive emotions, decreased negative emotions, improved blood pressure, improved blood glucose numbers. With the most improvements coming with the greater frequency of movement breaks.
Some of the biggest take-aways seem to be that even the people who took the 5 minute movement breaks every 2 hours still have pretty remarkable results.
AND most of the people in each group did not take all of the breaks that they should have, meaning that over an 8 hour work day, if you can build in 5 minutes of light movement 4 times throughout the day you might be able to make some significant changes to important health markers like blood glucose control. I know plenty of athletes that despite their heavy training loads still have to pay close attention to their blood glucose numbers. Listen to one person’s experience in the study who reduced blood glucose numbers by 42% throughout the day — in this episode.
It’s worth stating again that these results have not yet been published, so who knows what the recommendations may be. I know that I’ve been waiting and waiting for the results to be published to find out. But until then, it is a great reminder to move more during the work day and could be a fun experiment to see how movement breaks might improve your health markers, energy levels, and mood. Especially since most folks will be heading into their off-season and backing off on the training load.
Finding the time in your day
As with any new behavior, figuring out how to make it work for your life is the most important part. Try building in your movement breaks around other aspects of your work day. Can you take a walk during a call? Can you take a walk after you finish a task? If you are going to use the restroom can you take a longer walk back to your desk?
If a smoker can find the time to take their smoke-breaks — something that is definitely not beneficial for health — I think you, someone who truly cares about your health, can find a few 5 minute slots to get up from the seated position and move a little bit. Go be awesome.
Time for a movement break!