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Microbreaking

Lots of little breaks may help compensate for too much time spent in chairs

Paul Ingraham • 15m read
Photo of the front of bright blue kitchen timer isolated on white.

“Microbreaking” — also known as micro-exercise, or movement snacks — is a survival strategy for chair-bound office workers. It’s based on the idea that sitting too much is probably Bad For You, and that a little movement and stimulation sprinkled evenly throughout a day may be a partial antidote (as opposed to, say, an intense concentration of exercise in a morning workout, followed by several hours of growing roots into your chair). And hoo boy do modern humans sit a lot! In the United States, 8 hours per day for teens and 6 for adults, up an hour from 2008 to 2016.1

Microbreaks are small and relatively frequent exercise breaks from being stuck in one position at work. Almost any kind of exercise will do, but the more the better… as long as it still feels “easy,” brief. If your micro-exercise calls for a shower afterwards, it ain’t micro. If your micro-exercise needs a gym, you’re missing the point.

Ideally, for the extroverts, you do this with people, for the social benefits — which may be as much of an active ingredient as the exercise itself.

Ergonomics, schmergonomics: microbreaking is an upgrade to old-school ergonomic priorities that focus on ideal positioning and movement efficiency. No matter how perfectly arranged your computer workstation, it cannot protect you from the potential hazards of hours of stagnancy. The only truly ergonomic workstation is one that you regularly push away from! So that you can actually do something genuinely stimulating, such as a quick stair climb, some dynamic joint mobility drills.

The scientific case for microbreaking

Sedentariness and excessive sitting are not clear causes of back pain, contrary to popular assumption (an assumption I made myself for many years). The science over the last 20 years has been quite clear about this,2 with only shreds of contrary evidence that would encourage us. If sitting isn’t the problem, taking breaks from sitting probably isn’t good prevention or treatment for back pain — and if not for back pain, then probably no other common musculoskeletal pain either.

And yet! Modern data does show that microbreaking can prevent about 10% of long-term work absence (much of which is probably attributable to back pain). This was shown quite well by a huge 2022 study of 70,000 Danish workers,3 demonstrating a benefit on a large scale that has been hinted at by smaller trials for years.45678

And the science is also clear that exercise and activity may be the best (or at least least disappointing) overall medicine for back pain.9 So while simply getting up out of your chair frequently might not matter much by itself, it might matter a lot more if you use the break to actually exercise.

There’s also the much trickier scientific question of the effect of lots of chair time on general health, which is an active controversy with some people declaring a crisis of sedentariness and others warning that “couch potato shaming” is irresponsible fear-mongering. I explore this controversy fully in another article, The Trouble with Chairs. But we don’t need a firm answer here, because it’s clear that lots of sitting is at least somewhat unhealthy, and the controversy is really just about how unhealthy it is. We can safely bet that regularly interrupting our chair time with a bit of easy exercise is worthwhile.

I think there are also some hard-to-measure psychological benefits to breaking up the day with little doses of activity, especially with other people — and there is evidence of that too.10

Is microbreaking enough?

We don’t know exactly how unhealthy sitting is, or why, so it’s impossible to know what the solution is. It’s possible that nothing can fully compensate for excessive sitting. It could be a losing battle. Or perhaps the only defense is three half hour workouts at the gym every dang day. This lots of little breaks thing is a rational shot in the dark, only partially based on evidence. It’s a pragmatic compromise between what might work and what is reasonably achievable for the average person with a job that involves a lot of time in a chair.

If you are really serious about avoiding the possible health effects of working in chairs, then take the biggest break of all: quit your job and find another one that involves more exercise! Which is not all that radical a concept. People have certainly quit jobs for less. Many people can’t imagine sitting all day, and would never tolerate it.

But for those of us who are going to keep working in a chair …

You have to actually “exercise” on your microbreak: it’s not enough to just get up

Getting up and doing anything is probably better than nothing, but good microbreaks definitely involve more than a trip to the water cooler. A microbreak really means a tiny workout. Some parameters:

Good examples of microbreaking workouts:

The “music dance experience” on Severance, the surreal sci-fi office horror-comedy-drama series.

A common objection to a microbreaking prescription is “But I get up at work all the time!” Sure you do. Most people do. At the very least, you probably get up to get water and use the bathroom.11 You get up to go the photocopier or fax machine, to run something by your boss, to get the big hole punch, and so on.

Some of you might be getting up to stretch — unaware that stretching is over-rated as a form of therapeutic exercise.12 It doesn’t cut it, although the movement and sensory stimulation probably does qualify as "better than nothing."

You have to do something a little bit challenging with microbreaks. “Something therapeutic” means some kind of significant stimulation — the most perfectly opposite of whatever you are normally doing at work, within the bounds of what is practical to do for one or two minutes. Mobilizations are probably the most practical choice.

Photo of a set of indoor stairs. Each stair is labelled with a cumulative calorie-count in half calories increments: 0.5 calories, 1.0 calories, 1.5 calories, up to 6.5 at the top of the photo.

The calorie-counting stairs (click to zoom). Stairs are the most ubiquitous, accessible “gym equipment” in the world

Mobilizations: massaging with movement on your microbreak

Mobilizations (AKA dynamic mobility drills) are repeated, rhythmic movements. This is a lot like stretching, but with ants in your pants. More technically (a lot more technically): mobilizations repeatedly and substantially contract and elongate all or most of the musculature around a joint or in a region.

It’s basically therapeutic wriggling. The subject of mobilizations is thoroughly covered in Mobilize!.

Everybody mobilizes instinctively, sort of. Everyone squirms, wrenches, twists, trying to wiggle free from stiffness, active trigger points (muscle “knots”). Yawning and stretching (pandiculation), repeated once or twice, accompanied by sighs and groans, grimaces and joint pops, are extremely common reflexive behaviours seen in the caged human animal. These movements “take the edge off,” and then subside.

Do more than take the edge off. That’s all mobilizing is: nothing more than following that instinct, more rationally, more systematically, above all more repetitively. Does rolling your head around once or twice feel good? Necessary? Then do it several more times!

Squirming versus mobilizations
Squirming Mobilizations
instinctive rational
desperate optimistic
takes the edge off therapeutic
1–3 repetitions 8–50 repetitions

Contrasting mobilizations with stretching

Taking a break just to stretch is almost comically irrelevant to the problem. The problem is stagnation, stillness. Ergo, stretching is a bit off the mark.

(Some people have a rather dynamic stretching style, much like mobilizing. Ironically, they tend to feel kind of guilty for not “holding” their stretches longer. Also, although a lot better than static stretching, dynamic stretching still tends not to be systematic and repetitive enough to constitute a real antidote for all that stagnation in the chair.)

Again I’ll emphasize that anything is better than nothing, but old-school “hold it for sixty seconds” static stretching is not an ideal solution for a sedentariness problem.

Oomph! Can you strength train on your break?

Strength training is any kind of exercise that requires more force from your muscles than you usually ask of them, and that is a very low bar for a lot people. The number one public misconception about strength training is that it’s an exclusive culture of gym nuts that has to involve massive equipment, grunting, and buckets of protein powder. Nope. The truth is that strength training is highly efficient: easy to moderate workouts provide terrific bang for buck, and the benefits diminish steadily with more intense workouts.

Doubtful? I have a whole article about how efficient strength training is, and how it’s not just for gym rats.

Obviously it helps to have a few gym machines or barbells around, but there are many very accessible exercises that require no equipment at all, or only very simple and light equipment (like elastic exercises bands).

More, more, more! Many small breaks are better than a few large ones

The frequency of your natural breaks is probably not enough. Most office workers, in my experience — especially engineers, programmers and other assorted geeks (I’m one of you) — just do not get up often enough to compensate for all the sitting. Even drinking water full tilt and going to the bathroom every hour, on the hour, is probably just not enough.

For every thirty minutes of stagnation, you should have at least one minute of stimulation: the 30:1 rule. It’s not much of a “rule” though, because there is no scientific basis for it; it’s just advice based on years of experimenting with the balance between sedentary productivity and physical activity.13

What about standing to work? Is that enough stimulation?

Standing to work (standing desks) has been gaining popularity as an answer to the perils of sitting. However, standing seems to be just another form of stagnancy, with its own hazards. The Cornell Human Factors and Ergonomics Research Group identifies a number of problems with standing to work:

Standing to work has long known to be problematic, it is more tiring, it dramatically increases the risks of carotid atherosclerosis (ninefold) because of the additional load on the circulatory system, and it also increases the risks of varicose veins, so standing all day is unhealthy. The performance of many fine motor skills also is less good when people stand rather than sit.

They conclude with the advice to mainly sit to work but get up and move regularly:

The key is to build movement variety into the normal workday.

In other words, take microbreaks.

Uh oh, another “should”: the tedious burden of it all

“Don’t should on yourself,” a counselling mentor told me once. “And don’t should on other people.” The last thing anyone needs is another thing we “should” do. By far the worst thing about microbreaking, its greatest weakness as a therapeutic strategy, is that it’s in that exasperating category of “yet another thing I’m supposed to remember to do for my own good.” We have too many of these already, and I try to inflict such advice on people as little as possible.

But in this case it’s unavoidable. It’s a high priority should.

As explained in other articles more thoroughly, sitting a lot is corrosive to our health in many ways. In particular, it may also make us more vulnerable to chronic pain, and likely back pain in particular — there’s an epidemic of back pain in industrialized nations, and it’s sitting could be the reason why.

A career in a chair, like long distance running, is an exercise in seeing how much your body can put up with: not everybody can do it, and nobody can do it forever. Not without consequences.

Microbreaking is something you simply cannot afford not to learn, not if you expect to get through years of sitting unscathed. Every chair warrior needs several survival strategies, but this is the most important, the most inescapable of them.

And yet … it’s kind of tricky.

Teaching old dogs new tricks: strategies for remembering to take a microbreak

Almost everyone has trouble remembering to get up every twenty minutes. I’ve had engineers tell me flat out, “Forget it. I’m not doing it. I can’t do it. If it breaks me, fine, I’ll stop when I break.” That is their prerogative, of course, and yours — when I was a massage therapist,14 I got many years of regular business from people with that attitude!

But most people, I hope, will choose not to run themselves into the ground, and accept that sitting in a chair comes with a price: a certain inevitable chronicity of stiffness and pain, and, to keep it in check, a microbreaking habit as regular and essential as flossing. The question is not if but simply how. Here are some of the best strategies I’ve seen my clients use for building and sustaining a microbreaking habit:

There are countless more solutions, one for every individual. Good luck … and happy microbreaking!

About Paul Ingraham

Headshot of Paul Ingraham, short hair, neat beard, suit jacket.

I am a science writer in Vancouver, Canada. I was a Registered Massage Therapist for a decade and the assistant editor of ScienceBasedMedicine.org for several years. I’ve had many injuries as a runner and ultimate player, and I’ve been a chronic pain patient myself since 2015. Full bio. See you on Facebook or Twitter., or subscribe:

Related Reading

What’s new in this article?

Four updates have been logged for this article since publication (2006). All PainScience.com updates are logged to show a long term commitment to quality, accuracy, and currency. more Like good footnotes, update logging sets PainScience.com apart from most other health websites and blogs. It’s fine print, but important fine print, in the same spirit of transparency as the editing history available for Wikipedia pages.

I log any change to articles that might be of interest to a keen reader. Complete update logging started in 2016. Prior to that, I only logged major updates for the most popular and controversial articles.

See the What’s New? page for updates to all recent site updates.

2022 — General upgrade with lots of revision and modernization. Added more information about strength training and other kinds of micro-exercise. Introduced a focus on the social aspects of micro-exercise at work. Several new citations, and there’s a blog post with much more detail about the most important one (Andersen): “Itty bitty workouts prevent some workplace injuries.

2018 — Added a microbreaking reminder method.

2017 — Major revision based on a much more clearly spelled out and evidence-based rationale for microbreaking that does not depend on sitting as a risk factor for back pain.

2016 — A variety of minor revisions, clarifications, and modernizations throughout the article.

2006 — Publication.

Notes

  1. Yang L, Cao C, Kantor ED, et al. Trends in Sedentary Behavior Among the US Population, 2001-2016. JAMA. 2019 Apr;321(16):1587–1597. PubMed 31012934 ❐
  2. Chen SM, Liu MF, Cook J, Bass S, Lo SK. Sedentary lifestyle as a risk factor for low back pain: a systematic review. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2009 Jul;82(7):797–806. PubMed 19301029 ❐
  3. Andersen LL, Skovlund SV, Vinstrup J, et al. Potential of micro-exercise to prevent long-term sickness absence in the general working population: prospective cohort study with register follow-up. Sci Rep. 2022 Feb;12(1):2280. PubMed 35145176 ❐ PainSci Bibliography 52027 ❐

    This large study of 70,000 Danish workers concluded that taking breaks to do tiny workouts — micro-exercises to build strength — prevented at least 10% of long-term absences from work due to injury and illness. That is a big benefit, easily achieved, and it might be the best evidence available to date that even low-hanging fruit exercise is worthwhile — although it may have as much to do with complex social factors as getting stronger.

    See much more detailed information about this paper.

  4. Sundstrup E, Jakobsen MD, Brandt M, et al. Workplace strength training prevents deterioration of work ability among workers with chronic pain and work disability: a randomized controlled trial. Scand J Work Environ Health. 2014 May;40(3):244–51. PubMed 24535014 ❐
  5. Jakobsen MD, Sundstrup E, Brandt M, et al. Physical exercise at the workplace prevents deterioration of work ability among healthcare workers: cluster randomized controlled trial. BMC Public Health. 2015 Nov;15:1174. PubMed 26607232 ❐ PainSci Bibliography 52043 ❐
  6. Escriche-Escuder A, Calatayud J, Andersen LL, et al. Effect of a brief progressive resistance training program in hospital porters on pain, work ability, and physical function. Musculoskelet Sci Pract. 2020 08;48:102162. PubMed 32250836 ❐
  7. Benatti FB, Ried-Larsen M. The Effects of Breaking up Prolonged Sitting Time: A Review of Experimental Studies. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2015 Oct;47(10):2053–61. PubMed 26378942 ❐
  8. Loh R, Stamatakis E, Folkerts D, Allgrove JE, Moir HJ. Effects of Interrupting Prolonged Sitting with Physical Activity Breaks on Blood Glucose, Insulin and Triacylglycerol Measures: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Sports Med. 2020 Feb;50(2):295–330. PubMed 31552570 ❐ PainSci Bibliography 52040 ❐
  9. Back pain is notoriously difficult to treat, with virtually all popular treatment concepts producing mediocre results at best. See Machado et al.
  10. Andersen 2022, op. cit.

    In their big Danish study, Andersen et al. noted that the benefits they detected have not been found in home micro-exercise programs. Micro-exercising at work tends to be more social, which probably has all kinds of complex benefits:

    The underlying mechanisms of LTSA prevention from micro-exercise during working hours are likely to be multifactorial in nature, including both physiological, psychological and social factors.

    Whatever the active ingredients may be, they acted equally on everyone regardless of age, sex, or education. Exercise is good for a lot of people, and micro-exercise appears to be particularly easy and helpful, making its benefits accessible to countless people who would otherwise not exercise at all.

  11. Some people deliberately drink extra water as a way of forcing themselves to take breaks. This is often motivated by an unjustified fear of dehydration, unfortunately. But, on the bright side, a little extra water is legitimately useful for preventing kidney stones!
  12. Stretching is not a pillar of fitness: no type of stretching is a warm up, prevents or treats soreness or injury in general, or enhances peformance (but it can actually backfire). It can increases flexibility, but the value of flexibility is low, even for most athletes. Stretch seems to have almost no value in treating any common kind of chronic pain. For more information, see Quite a Stretch: Stretching science has shown that this extremely popular form of exercise has almost no measurable benefits.
  13. It’s not that 30:1 is biologically optimal — less could be sufficient, more might be necessary, no one knows — it’s just a rough compromise between doing as much as possible and how much interruption we can tolerate.
  14. I was a Registered Massage Therapist with a busy practice in Vancouver, Canada, from 2000–2010, RIP. After that, science journalism and this website took over my career and they remain my sole focus today. See my bio.

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