The All-or-Nothing Exercise Trap

Going to the gym, as we understand it today, is a relatively recent concept.

My grandfather worked in the steel foundries in Sheffield. He did hard physical labour all day and walked three miles each way to and from work. He also smoked 40 cigarettes a day, placed a bet every Saturday and went to the local working men’s club twice a week – that was the way it was back then.

The point is: he didn’t intentionally exercise.

Previous generations often had movement built into everyday life. There were fewer cars, fewer labour-saving devices and certainly no grocery delivery arriving at the touch of a screen. Walking, carrying, lifting, cleaning and climbing stairs were simply part of the day. We live very differently now. Many of us have gym memberships or at least good intentions of getting one and we understand more than ever how important exercise is.

But after more than 25 years working in fitness, I’ve repeatedly come up against what I call the all-or-nothing problem. We’ve come to think that exercise needs to be a workout. We need to change our clothes, go to the gym, attend a class, follow a programme or somehow carve 30 or 45 minutes out of an already busy day.

And when we can’t do it properly, too often we don’t do it at all. The irony is that all or nothing very often leads to nothing.

That’s why I think one of the most interesting developments in fitness is the growing research around “exercise snacks” – short bursts of purposeful activity accumulated throughout the day rather than completed in one traditional workout. 

Crucially, this isn’t simply another fitness trend. The UK Chief Medical Officers’ physical activity guidelines no longer require activity to be accumulated in bouts of at least 10 minutes, recognising that shorter periods of activity count too.

I developed my own version of this idea, Movement Moments, specifically for older adults and people whose age, health or mobility can make traditional exercise feel inaccessible. A Movement Moment is just three minutes of purposeful movement that can be fitted naturally into the day.

But the wider principle applies to all of us.

Take the stairs. Do a few squats while the kettle boils. Walk briskly for five minutes. Get up from your desk and move. Carry the shopping. Do three minutes now and another few minutes later.

Perhaps we don’t always need to find time to exercise. Perhaps we need to get better at putting movement back into our lives each day.

Karen Case is the founder of The 3-20 Way and creator of the Movement Moment concept. Visit https://320way.com