If you haven't heard of "micromovement" routines, it's like exercise snacking, where you break up sedentary time with mini workouts or chunks of movement, like walks, bodyweight routines, or even a quick jog.
According to research from Yoga-Go, you may add eight years to your biological age if you spend a lot of time sitting, which can be eight hours a day or more, regardless of whether you still exercise daily.
Determined to start my day on the right foot, I decided to add a seven-minute bodyweight workout to my mornings, and this is what I did and didn't notice after 30 days.
Why does micromovement matter?
The decision to stand rather than sit or to take the stairs over the escalator determines how much movement you fit into your day and how much energy you burn outside of workouts, also known as Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, or NEAT.
Just because you fit a 45-minute HIIT workout into your day doesn't undo the impact of accumulated sitting time, so how often you get up and move about really does matter for your long-term health.
7-minute micro-workout
The movements below can help maintain functional strength, relieve stress, combat sedentary time, and move your muscles and joints, which increases oxygen-rich blood flow around the body.
Here's the routine I followed every morning for 30 days.
- Squats: Squats build lower-body strength and help you maintain independence as you age. Strong legs and glutes contribute to activities like walking or running, and keep the hips, knees and ankles strong and mobile.
- Push-ups: Push-ups build strength in your triceps, shoulders and pecs while improving pushing power. Focus on maximal range of motion by extending your elbows, then lowering your chest as close to the floor as you can. Engage your core, and exhale as you press up.
- Cat-cow: Cat-cows improve spinal mobility and posture awareness and reduce stiffness. Try to increase your range of motion with every rep, inhaling as you drop your stomach and exhaling as you round through your spine.
- Shoulder blade squeezes: Squeezes strengthen the upper back and improve posture. This is also a great way to increase activity in the rear stabilizing muscles of the shoulders, which supports shoulder mechanics. Keep your shoulders relaxed.
- Lunges: Lunges are a unilateral strengthening exercise targeting the hips, glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves, improving balance and stability. Reversing your lunge puts less pressure on the knees; forward lunging improves quad emphasis.
- Sit-ups: Sit-ups strengthen the core, namely the rectus abdominis, which is a large superficial layer of muscles along the abdomen that works as you flex your torso. Focus on keeping your feet pressed into the ground and try to sit upright so that your hands can pass your toes.
- Supermans: This back exercise works the muscles along your posterior chain, including the upper, mid and lower back, glutes, hamstrings, plus your arms and shoulders. It's a great one to try if you don't have weights to row or pull.
What happened when I tried it everyday for 30 days?
I love functional compound bodyweight exercises because they target the main muscle groups in your body and they can still feel challenging. If you're short on time and just want to get some movement in while you can, 60 seconds of each move performed back-to-back gives you a seven-minute full-body workout before you've even brushed your teeth in the morning.
I love that I could work my chest, shoulders, arms, back, glutes, core and legs without picking up a single weight or worrying over getting to the gym. I hadn't fatigued myself enough that I couldn't then go to Pilates, the yoga studio, or out for a run later in the day, and I had woken up my muscles, oiled my joints and got fresh blood flow pumping around my body while lifting my heart rate. All before I had even showered.
I love functional compound bodyweight exercises because they target the main muscle groups in your body and they can still feel challenging.
However, it's progressive overload that moves the needle when building strength and muscle, which means increasing the challenge on your muscles as they adapt to a routine or exercise. For that reason, I didn't see any physical changes, as my body is very attuned to lifting weights and attending classes like Pilates.
After 30 days of repeating these exercises, I genuinely felt my form improving and I could squeeze out extra push-ups without dropping my knees during the final 20 seconds of each minute. I also noticed my mobility improved a little during the day because the squats helped wake up my hips, knees and ankles.
I have a bad left shoulder, which has been a problem area for a number of years. Performing shoulder squeezes everyday helped me reset my posture first thing and helped wake up the lazy stabilizer muscles on my left side. Coupled with regular Supermans, I felt more aware of my posture daily.
I really enjoyed how this routine was quick and accessible and helped me feel more energized going into my day. It only takes seven minutes to wake up your whole body and build some foundational, functional strength, so it's hard to see why I shouldn't keep it up.
Let me know if you'd give this routine a try by voting in the poll above.
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