How Brief Vigorous Activity Supports Longevity
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In this clip from Dr. Rhonda Patrick's appearance on The School of Greatness, she describes exercise snacks as short bursts of movement that interrupt long periods of sitting. In a randomized crossover study of 18 men with overweight or obesity, breaking up an 8.5-hour sitting period with repeated squat or walking breaks improved post-meal glucose control. The squat breaks also produced more muscle activity than one continuous 30-minute walk. [1]
Brief vigorous movement also tracks with long-term health. In 25,241 adults who reported no structured exercise, a median of three one- or two-minute vigorous lifestyle bouts per day was associated with 38% to 40% lower all-cause and cancer mortality and 48% to 49% lower cardiovascular mortality. Activities included fast stair climbing and other daily movements that raised intensity without requiring a formal workout. [2]
Dr. Patrick's practical message is to make movement easy to repeat. Bodyweight squats, push-ups, brisk stairs, or a short hotel-room circuit can interrupt sedentary time and add meaningful activity to a busy day. These small bouts complement dedicated aerobic and resistance training and help make physical activity part of a consistent daily routine.
This clip is excerpted, with permission, from Dr. Rhonda Patrick's appearance on The School of Greatness. Thank you to The School of Greatness for allowing us to share it.
- ^ Gao Y; Li QY; Finni T; Pesola AJ (2024). Enhanced muscle activity during interrupted sitting improves glycemic control in overweight and obese men. Scand J Med Sci Sports 34, 4.
- ^ Ahmadi, Matthew N; Doherty, Aiden; Gibala, Martin J.; Gill, Jason M. R.; Hamer, Mark; Stamatakis, Emmanuel, et al. (2022). Association Of Wearable Device-Measured Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity With Mortality Public Health Nutrition 28, 12.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Like, even just doing it in your hotel— like, I have this go-to routine I'll do in my hotel room. It's kind of like a version of what CrossFitters call the Cindy workout. So, I'll do 10 push-ups, and then I do 10 V-ups, which are kind of like a version of a sit-up, and then I do like 15 bodyweight squats. And I do it over and over and over for like 10 to 15 minutes.
Lewis Howes: With a rest or no?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: No rest? No rest. You just keep going. You do it 10 minutes. Nonstop. Yeah, I go from one to the next to the next. I mean, I'll, like, catch my breath for a minute, but, like, the recovery is very short, maybe 20 seconds, you know, like, it's not like that.
Lewis Howes: So you're keeping your heart rate up the whole time?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'm keeping my heart rate up the whole time.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And usually, like, in many cases, I only do 10 minutes, like, if it's, like, a hotel room workout where I just need to do something quick and, like, get it. But it really works.
Lewis Howes: Really?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: The Cindy workout, yeah.
Lewis Howes: Will that generate lactate also?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, absolutely.
Lewis Howes: And where do you feel that?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: You can measure it, but, like, heart rate is a good way. Like, if you're getting up to, like, 85%, so I wear my Apple Watch, right? And if you're getting up to, like, you know, 85% of your max heart rate, 80%, 85%, you're most likely gonna be making lactate. You're creating it. Yeah.
Lewis Howes: What does it feel like to have lactate in the body?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Burns. It burns.
Lewis Howes: Does it burn, like, in the muscle group or more in the lungs?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I feel it in the muscle group.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: When I'm doing things like bodyweight squats or biking or push-ups, yeah, I mean, you feel it, you're burning. It feels heavy, it feels like it hurts, it's painful.
Lewis Howes: Exactly.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I mean, even, yeah, you know, doing bodyweight squats are great. There's a study that came out, I don't know, it was like 6 months ago or something, that showed doing 10 bodyweight squats every 45 minutes throughout like an 8-hour-ish workday was better for glucose regulation—blood sugar regulation—than a 30-minute walk. And I timed myself. It took me 27 seconds to do 10 bodyweight squats. And, you know, so these are like exercise snacks, right?
Lewis Howes: Yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: These are things that you do. It's a great way to break up your sedentary time.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So when you're sitting in your office for hours at a time, you're sedentary. And it's interesting because there's been a lot of research that have come out over the past few years showing that being sedentary, I always used to think of being sedentary as like, oh, you're not physically active. And sometimes I still use that word, you're sedentary. It's true. When you're sedentary, you're not physically active. And that's typically when you're doing a study and you're categorizing someone in a group, right? But you can be sedentary and still be physically active. So, like, I do a lot of sitting when I'm at my computer, when I'm researching something, reading studies, you know, I'm at my computer, I'm doing a podcast, I'm sitting. I sit for multiple hours, right?
Lewis Howes: Yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That is sedentary time. And that has been shown to be an independent risk factor for certain cancers.
Lewis Howes: Wow.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Meaning independent of your physical activity even, which is interesting because it's like, it makes you think, wow, exercise, not getting up and doing, you know, a 2-minute, 3-minute, like, you know, you do some high knees or you do some burpees or some squats or something where you're getting that physical activity. And you just do it for a couple of minutes and you break up your workday. What's really interesting is there's been studies showing that you— so people, there's exercise snacks in a structured way, like I just said, right? Where you're like, okay, I set a timer every, you know, 45 minutes, I'm going to get up and do 10 bodyweight squats.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Okay, that's a structured exercise snack. Well, some people have unstructured exercise snacks. So let's say they work on the 4th floor of an office building.
Lewis Howes: And they walk the stairs.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: They sprint the stairs. They sprint the stairs. They get their heart rate up, right?
Lewis Howes: Let's go.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. So there's been large studies—
Lewis Howes: Interesting, sprinting.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, yeah, large—
Lewis Howes: Not just taking and walking the stairs.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: No. They're like—
Lewis Howes: It's still good to walk the stairs too, right?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Okay. Let me define sprint because if we're talking about a coach's sprint, no, they're not doing what a coach's sprint would be. What I mean is they're going fast, okay? They're running.
Lewis Howes: Yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: They're running up the stairs.
Lewis Howes: Right, right.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: They're going faster than just walking. They're not sprinting in the coach's sense of the word.
Lewis Howes: Thank you for pointing that out because people might be like, Rhonda, you're crazy. They're not sprinting, no way.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And you're right. They're running as fast as they can up the stairs. And their heart rate's getting pretty high. And this has been measured because there's been large studies that have put accelerometers on people where they measure their heart rate. And they found that people that do anywhere from between 2 to 6 minutes of this sort of unstructured type of vigorous exercise. They have a 40% lower cancer-related mortality.
Lewis Howes: Come on.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: 40% lower all-cause mortality, so dying from all causes, 50% lower cardiovascular-related mortality. This is incredible because this was even in people that identified themselves as non-exercisers.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: In other words, they don't go to the gym, they don't take that extra time, they just do this. This is how they exercise. They incorporate this. You know, lifestyle. It's called Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity, VILPA. And it's kind of eye-opening that even just doing 2 to 6 minutes. Now, when I gave you those statistics, that was the 6 minutes, that was the upper end. So the 6 minutes a day. But 6 minutes a day, who doesn't have 6 minutes a day? I mean—
Lewis Howes: Why does it seem like sometimes I hear people say, oh, I'm going to try this once every 2 hours or set an alarm every hour at my desk and I'm going to get up and I'm going to do... 10 push-ups, right? Or 20 sit-ups or whatever it might be, or 10 air squats.
Lewis Howes: And yeah, it seems so easy to do it for 60 seconds, 5 times a day, right? 5 minutes, 60 seconds, 5 times a day. Why is it that so few people do it consistently? They might try it for a day or 2, but then they just stop. To do 5 minutes, 60 seconds, 5 times a day, why does it seem so hard for people to be consistent with this style of movement?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, I think it's a good question. It comes down to, you know, like maybe, maybe it disrupts their flow too much. They're in the middle of something working. And so you bring up a good point, and that is you really do— you have to find something that you will do consistently. It's very, very important. And, you know, because exercise is—it has to be part of your personal hygiene every day, right? Like brushing your teeth.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Like, you— it's not an add-on. You don't add it on. You do it. And I've sort of adopted this that, you know, I've recently really just focused a lot on resistance training, on doing a lot of high-intensity interval training, also getting my aerobic exercise. And it's a priority for me, you know.
Lewis Howes: When did it become a priority for you?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Well, I've always been sort of an aerobic exercise, like a runner, you know, so I've always had that aerobic exercise part of my life. You know, I've always been physically active.
Lewis Howes: But never lifting, huh?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: But lifting, lifting has been— I would say I started making it a priority about a year and a half, maybe a year and a half ago, but like maybe like a year ago. And then really about 9 months ago, getting really serious about it. And that happened when I started getting a coach.
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