Don’t believe you have time to get to the gym? You aren’t alone. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that over a quarter of Americans don’t get any physical activity outside of work. However, you may be surprised by the small exercise snacks that could be hiding in your daily routines — and their benefits. Even a couple of minutes spent taking the stairs instead of the elevator or carrying a heavy bag of groceries could cut your chances of having a heart attack in half, suggests a new study.

Here is what you should know about incidental exercise, its benefits, and how to sneak a little exercise into your everyday activities and chores.

What did the study find?

Researchers from the University of Sydney looked at data on over 9,000 men and 13,000 women, including whether they had heart attacks or other cardiovascular issues and how many minutes they got of “vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity” — in other words, exercise that incidentally happens throughout the day, including walking your dog or walking up stairs. Researchers compared the rate of significant cardiovascular events — like heart attacks or heart failure — over eight years among individuals who reported no exercise at all with those who said they didn’t intentionally exercise or go to the gym but did get some of this incidental exercise. 

For women who got between one-and-a-half and four minutes of incidental exercise, the risk of severe cardiovascular problems and heart attacks was almost 50% lower compared to those who said they never did these types of activities. Even women who spent as little as 1.2 to 1.6 minutes on elbow-grease chores or stair-climbing daily saw their risks lower by 30%.

However, men didn’t see the same benefits. Those who got 5.6 minutes of daily incidental activity only saw a 16% reduction in risks for a major cardiovascular event compared to those who reported doing no exercise—whether incidental or otherwise. Researchers are unsure why this is.

Even simple chores help — ‘Something is better than nothing’

The benefits of activities like taking the stairs pale compared to intentional, routine exercise, which you should do for a minimum of 150 minutes weekly, plus two days of strength-building workouts, per the CDC. The study didn’t compare heart failure and heart attack risks among individuals who regularly exercised versus those whose only physical activity was incidental.

But “doing something is likely better than nothing is the take-home message about incidental exercise,” said Dr. Luke Laffin, co-director of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Blood Pressure Disorders. “Among people that do not do any regular exercise, even climbing stairs can be helpful. That being said, individuals that do regular exercise show significantly lower rates of cardiovascular disease — among other medical problems — than those that do not do any regular exercise.”

Even short bursts of activity throughout the day can have some cardiovascular benefits, interventional cardiologist and chief medical officer at VitalSolution Dr. Bradley Serwer says. “While incidental exercise may not be long in duration or intense, it does keep a person active, burns calories, and may keep some people from getting less stiff.”

According to Laffin, any activity that increases the heart rate and puts a healthy bit of aerobic stress on the body also benefits heart health by relieving stress, widening the blood vessels, and helping maintain healthy blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Serwer says the key to achieving protective effects from incidental exercise is to do it frequently.

Working incidental exercise into your day

The odds are good that you are already getting some incidental exercise without knowing it. However, you can always look for opportunities to add more, say experts. “Incidental exercise is recommended for everyone, especially those that have long periods of inactivity throughout the day,” Serwer says. He adds that getting up and moving around periodically is particularly important if you sit behind a desk at work all day. “A sedentary lifestyle has been deemed the new smoking and is very detrimental to your overall health,” Serwer notes.

One of the simplest ways to get a decent workout during your day-to-day activities is to take the stairs instead of an elevator, which Serwer highly recommends. However, experts say there’s plenty you can do to add incidental exercise to your day, even if you live in a single-level home, including:

• Carrying your groceries instead of wheeling them in a cart (double up by doing this and choosing a distant parking spot).
• Give your floors a good scrub.
• Parking further from the entrance of a store so you can get a longer walk.
• Shoveling snow or raking leaves are great chores to get your heart pumping. Just be careful to take frequent breaks, particularly in cold weather.
• Take your dog for a walk instead of just letting them out in the yard.
• Play with your children.
• Work in the garden.
• Walk to shops or other destinations when possible instead of driving.
• Go for a walk while you take meetings (either over the phone or in person).

Remember that frequency is the key, so attempt to get even a few minutes of one of these activities into each day.

Finally, be aware that incidental exercise isn’t a replacement for intentional exercise.

“Everyone should do some degree of regular exercise to reduce their risk of future cardiovascular disease,” Laffin says. “However, if there are weeks that you can’t get to the gym or exercise —because, let’s face it, life happens — then if we are active daily, we are getting some benefit from a cardiovascular perspective.”