Exercise 'Snacking' Builds Strength Comparable to One Long Session, Small Study Finds

Forty-five young men, all students between 18 and 25 who already lifted weights on a regular basis, spent eight weeks squatting under supervision at a Smith machine. Three days a week, some of them did their squats in one go: 60 weighted repetitions in a single continuous session. Others split the same work into three separate 1-minute bouts of 20 squats each. A third group did no supervised training at all.

The study, led by scientists at Tongji University in China and published in the Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness, was built to test a question that has mostly been asked about walking and stair climbing. The idea of 'exercise snacking', short bursts of activity scattered through the day, has gained popularity lately. Emerging evidence suggests such bursts can improve cardiorespiratory fitness, blood sugar regulation and several other markers of health. Most of that research, though, has centered on aerobic activity. Whether lifting works the same way was far less clear.

There were reasons to expect it might, and reasons to doubt it. A large study has suggested that 90 to 119 minutes of resistance training a week is the sweet spot for lower mortality risk, and that time need not be packed into one gym visit. Breaking it up may keep fatigue from building, which could allow better-quality repetitions. Another recent study found that holding a squat or plank a few times a week can help lower blood pressure. On the other side, continuous training might build better endurance than small snacks.

Each person's squat weight was increased progressively over the two months. Strength and endurance were tested at the start and end. For endurance, participants squatted as many times as they could at 40 percent of their maximum squat weight. Before testing, they were asked to avoid alcohol and strenuous activity for at least 24 hours and to get enough sleep.

By the end, muscular strength, isometric squat force and relative muscular endurance had improved in both exercise groups compared with the control group. Traditional training produced somewhat larger gains in strength and endurance than snacking, but the differences were not statistically significant. The authors wrote that their hypothesis, that continuous training would produce greater improvements, was not supported.

The one clear difference was how it felt. Participants who snacked on their squats reported having more fun than those who did a single long session. The authors suggest that dividing the same volume into several brief sessions may lower the perceived burden of prolonged exercise and give people more flexibility to fit training into their days. They concluded that the findings do not support the idea that continuous resistance training is superior, and that spreading it across short bouts yields comparable neuromuscular adaptations.

The caveats are plain. The study is small, limited to young men who already trained, and ran only eight weeks. Further research is needed to see how the approaches compare over longer periods and across more diverse groups. The enjoyment link is a hypothesis too: it is possible, the report says, that snacking makes workouts feel easier to complete, which could boost a sense of autonomy and achievement. For now, the results point to fragmented training as a practical option for people short on time, pending follow-up trials.