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Comment by zaplin | Hacker News Reader

Incidentally I've been doing this the past three months.

I have an athletic background and I tend to go full-on workouts etc. But I decided to take it easy this summer, stopped training in general but I would set an alarm every 30 minutes and take short brakes (2-5mins) from work.

In that time I do a few pushups and a couple exercises with the kettlebell. Nothing fancy or tiring, I stop just before I feel any type of resistance or "burn".

This happens 5-8 times a day. On weekends I do none of that.

Of course It's anecdotal but my body has FOR SURE changed. It's like when I did two times a day workouts.

Of course I'll go back doing full workouts because I enjoy them. But anybody who dislikes devoting big chunks of time just for workouts should definitely experiment with micro workouts.

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You take out 2-5 minutes out of every 30 minutes??? After those 5 minutes I would need 30 minutes just to get back into my context.

Everyone is different and has different routines. If I'm in the middle of important work or experiencing flow I will not break it. But we all do have repetitive tasks or housekeeping work to do. This is the time I do it.

As always, experiment and adjust

Depends on how complicated your context is. I try to strive to keep it as simple as possible so distractions don’t matter that much.

that's standard pomodoro timings which are globally popular

true. The reasoning was pomodoro technique to keep the mind/eyes fresh (20-30mins) + a time-frame that is enough for the body to restore all the necessary "ingredients ". (> 15-20mins)

The equivalent for sedate people like us might be a couple of squats or one push up. If you do it every 30 minutes it has to be maintainable. It could even be walk and get some water. (You get a free squat if you had to stand up, just sit down slowly when you get back)

A 3 minute interruption e.g. a phone call risks dropping the context. But if I just step out of my office chair and do some excercises I'm sure I could keep the context in my head while making a few pushups. Since I'm not really distracted perhaps the break can be a thinking break. Some times it's hard to avoid "thinking with your keyboard" and use your head. When I'm stuck on a really hard problem I go for a walk or take a shower or something. I think this could be the same thing.

It could be even better than that, it could be used to solve distraction problems we already have: if, during compile breaks (I'm sure some other professions have similar downtime), instead of slacking off on hn or trying to squeeze in some multitasking productivity we'd just do some body stuff, our brains would retain focus much better than without that exercise. It could be even better than that: if, during compile breaks (I'm sure some other professions have similar downtime), instead of slacking off on hn or trying to squeeze in some multitasking productivity we'd just do some body stuff, our brains would retain focus much better than without that exercise.

If anyone reading is into launching maker stuff: consider putting some hardware/software pair on crowdfunding where the hardware connects to a workout detector (kettle bell with accelerometer, treadmill, DDR mat, whatever, my personal favorite would be a comically big crank on a resistance unit, even just a smartwatch with an accelerometer would do) and the software hooks into the computer's power management, detecting heavy load and enforcing some extra throttling unless the workout detector is worked. I believe that this could fool our motivation/reward system quite nicely.

Taking a short exercise break like this is also a great procrastination killer for me.

When I feel the urge to distract myself I'll just get up and do some kind of light bodyweight exercises that require coordination and balance, and then I'm ready to continue the work I was starting to dread.

Exercise, stretching, and things like that don't need to take you out of your context at all. You can continue thinking about your work while you do it and come back to the work ready to go and maybe with some problems solved.

Am I an anomaly? I hear this often among engineers but I don't seem to have this issue. I can literally pick up from the line of code or document I left off from last evening. The only type of work where I need to "rebuild context" is when dealing with financial spreadsheets.

You aren't unique. When I was younger, an interruption meant that I lost my flow, but not my train of thought.

Now I'm a little older and have a brief pause where I think back to where I was, but it's still pretty quick.

I find it depends heavily on both the nature of the problem I'm working on and my mental state, and also the nature of what I switch to.

If I haven't slept all night, context switches are total killers.

If the problem requires me to keep in mind a ton of factors and dependencies while I develop (design or code), context switches can be quite bad.

If the distraction require me to drag up a ton of context from a couple of weeks ago, then it can be quite bad.

If I'm well rested and someone comes with a technical question that's hard but limited in scope, it's mostly fine and I can get back to it within a minute if not less.

Yes, I believe this is unusual.

Thing with repetitive exercise is you don't need to think about it and actually there can be time to think in your original context without the distraction of, in my case, the IDE and code I'm working on.

I think volition is the difference. Me wanting to get up and get some water and stretch my legs is something I plan on doing and carry it at a time that I chose. Me being interrupted by someone to ask me something while I'm deep in thought or/and trying to make a feature click is not the same.

Do you ever just stop and think for a moment after reading or writing something? I do, taking small pauses to think in between looking at things is a regular part of my workflow.

When I do pause, I can stop and do a few pushups. It helps me focus a bit better, and there's no context loss because I'm not doing or thinking about anything new. It's not much different from leaning back in my chair to think for a minute.

Very interesting. Question...

For a while, I kept a pair of shiny chrome dumbbells atop table, and could impromptu pick them up and use, when pacing and thinking about a design problem, without thinking much about the exercise itself.

If I resumed this, doing it several times a day, for only a few minutes at a time, it'd have a big impact?

(I also used to have a Concept2 erg in my work area, but somehow using that was more interrupting.)

The thing is variance, if you just do a small range of movement (say only bicep curls), it might be unbalanced. The idea is good though. I do a whole range of exercises from yoga, fitness, a few weightlift-y exercises and functional movement which make a nice practice during the week.

Of course it would work. Though I recommend one of those door frame pull-up bars. You'll be amazed how fast you progress when you're just using it to burn time while thinking, Zoom calls, and other dead time.

You can do a huge body recomp with just push-ups + pull-ups. You just have to do them.

I tend to do that.

And I've experienced some embarrassing moments when during a zoom call I'm doing burpees and I hear my name and I have to talk in front of 5 people with very deep, loud breathing and someone asks me.... What were you doing man?

What you describe here is also known as “Greasing the Groove”.

I will try this starting now.

Two weeks ago I decided to try reps of 20 push-ups whenever I thought about them. I haven’t thought of doing so more than twice a day BUT I’ve noticed an increase in my chest mass.

I want to get back into exercising regularly but that large chunk of time isn’t conducive to my personal projects…I just don’t want to dedicate so much time to exercise.

I’m relatively healthy so it’s not a big deal but you know how it is. Your biggest bully is yourself.

Great work! Keep it up. This method is called Greasing The Groove and is a well used method to break through pull up plateaus.

After two weeks of 40 or so push ups a day it’s incredibly unlikely you’ve gained muscle mass in your chest (or at least not noticeable) what you are probably seeing is increased water retention in the muscles and other associated exercise related side affects.

I’m a fairly muscley guy and if I stop working out for a couple of weeks I look “flatter” when I’m training regularly my muscles look fuller and rounder after a week or so back at it.

True muscle gains take a lot of time.

You'd be surprised how quickly someone with very little muscle mass can put a little bit on. It gets harder to keep adding once you've started.

Beginner gains are real.

If you can do 20 pushups, you're already in a good starting shape.

The several months of consistent exercise I was doing a few months ago helped, I think. This time last year, I struggled to do 10. Now, I start to feel the burn when I reach 16 but I just power through.

Numbers without adjusting for age are meaningless.

When I was 18 and weighed 130 lbs, I could do 50 push-ups almost effortlessly.

These days, I struggle to do 20 (still can, but my arms will literally noodle-fail at 25).

Sounds a lot like high volume training like 8x8s or 10x10s where you use much lighter weight and leave a lot of reps on the table but do twice as many or more sets.

For anyone interested, the simplest form of that is to use 60% of your one rep max and do 10 sets of 10 repetitions with adequate rest periods in between, 4 minutes minimum. Focus on form and don’t rush the reps.

Depending on how hard you're pushing yourself this is commonly known as "greasing the groove" and is often used to get passed performance plateaus. The key is to never train to failure, increase the total volume of fresh/quality reps(spread through the day), and switch up the routine after x weeks to avoid overuse injuries.

I’ve also heard of people putting a pull-up bar in a well traveled doorway and doing a single pull-up every time they walk through it.

Are you not scared about skipping warmups? This sounds like you aren't doing any. I was sick for a few days and decided to do some TRX rowing (20) and my elbow started to hurt the next day :)

Just do the first few at low intensity. A few push-ups or light kettlebell swings are a warmup for folks with a good strength baseline. For less fit folks, push-ups off the knees or body-weight squats would work the same way.

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