Good news for those who struggle to get to the gym comes in the form of a newly published study that shows we can stay fit and healthy by incorporating short ten-second bursts of vigorous, everyday activity into our lives. According to Emmanuel Stamatakis, professor of physical activity, lifestyle, and population health at the University of Sydney, doing a minute of so-called incidental exercise — the kind that barely registers as a fitness chore — could dramatically improve your health and add years to your life.

Breaking up sitting with frequent bouts of brief but vigorous movement for just a few seconds at a time raises your heart rate, mobilises joints, improves circulation, lowers blood fats and helps muscles to clear sugars from the bloodstream. Walking briskly up a steep hill, playing energetically with children, running for a bus or carrying heavy shopping all count as what Stamatakis and his colleagues have termed “vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity”, or VILPA, and can undo some of the adverse metabolic effects of being sedentary.

Stamatakis says that upping the intensity of daily activities “requires no time commitment, no preparation, no club memberships, no special skills” and might simply entail doing your usual chores with “a bit more energy”. Here’s how to build more VILPA into your day.

Power up a flight of stairs

It gets the heart pumping and uses the hamstrings, calf muscles, quadriceps and glutes for a boost in leg power — and researchers at McMaster University found that 60-second bursts of stair climbing throughout the day boosted cardiovascular fitness over time. Others have shown stairs are a route to better cardio-metabolic health, with a team from University College London and the University of Sydney recently showing it lowers blood pressure. Climb five flights a day and you could reduce your risk of heart disease by 20 per cent, according to another study of 450,000 adults in the British Biobank by researchers from Tulane University.

• Why you should always take the stairs to live longer

Do 60-second bursts on a bike

Add short sprints to your cycle commute or do a 60-second indoor bike workout and you will reap health gains. Martin Gibala, professor of kinesiology at McMaster University, reported in PLOS One that previously sedentary adults who regularly did three 20-second flat-out “sprints” on an indoor bike produced almost identical improvements to those seen to a 45-minute moderate-intensity bike ride. Over 12 weeks, both groups saw improvements in cardiovascular fitness and insulin sensitivity — a marker of how your body regulates blood sugar.

Perform squats throughout the day

Squats engage the glutes, hamstrings and quads, some of the largest muscles in the body, which burn calories and mop up excess sugars at a faster rate than smaller muscles during exercise. The exercise simultaneously builds muscle and burns fat, so it pays to add them into your daily routine. “They can help to reduce body fat and improve functional muscle strength, posture and mobility, so are a powerful addition as we get older,” says the personal trainer Harry Jameson. Researchers from Zhejiang University in China and South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences reported in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports that doing 100 squats per day — broken down as ten every 45 minutes — significantly improved the body’s ability to control blood sugar, helping to reduce the long-term risk of type 2 diabetes.

• How to perfect squats, the most underrated exercise

Get digging and raking in the garden

Gardening — particularly vigorous digging and raking — counts as exercise and a report by the Horticultural Trades Association this year found that planting, removing or tending to plants uses up to seven calories per minute, similar to moderate aerobics and steady indoor cycling. Adults in their sixties who spend even a few minutes at a time gardening have better cardiovascular health, according to one study at Penn State College of Medicine.

Run for a bus (or after your children)

Repeated short sprints of as little as 4-20 seconds in duration have been shown in studies to stress muscles and other bodily systems enough to bring about positive physiological changes. But you don’t need to do them on a treadmill: running for the bus, after your children or up a short hill will bring similar benefits. Over time it will help artery health, cholesterol levels and even your waistline. A study from Napier University on adults in their sixties and older showed that twice-weekly sessions in which they progressively added six-second sprints improved blood pressure and physical function, and according to the researchers was “an effective tool for promoting optimal ageing”.

• Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing

Carry heavy shopping to the car

No need to hit the gym every day as the NHS lists this as one of the key “incidental” muscle-strengthening activities we should all be doing at least twice a week to maintain functional strength and offset muscle decline. It’s weight training without raising a dumbbell, and Stamatakis says that if you carry about 5 per cent of your body weight — such as shopping or a backpack — even for a minute, it counts as vigorous exercise. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy has previously warned that the rise of online shopping has led to a decline in older people carrying and lifting shopping bags to and from the car or home. As a result, millions risk falling because they are failing to maintain strong muscles.

Do the heavy housework

Get the mop out, wash the car, scrub the bath or vigorously clean out cupboards for a total of 22 minutes a day and you can offset some of the risks of sitting for lengthy periods, according to a study of 12,000 midlifers from Norway, Sweden and the USA that was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine report. Housework can also have immediate benefits for cognitive health, according to a team from Penn State College of Medicine. Reporting in Annals of Behavioural Medicine last year, they found that middle-aged people who did household chores showed improvement in cognitive processing speed equivalent to being four years younger than those who didn’t move as much. “Everyday movement counts as a source of accumulated physical activity that could be credited toward a healthy lifestyle and may have some direct impact on cognitive health,” said Jonathan Hakun, assistant professor of neurology and psychology and lead author of that paper.

Walk briskly after a meal

A brisk walk — that’s a rate of 100 steps per minute or faster — for just one to two minutes after a meal helps to lower blood sugar levels, according to a review of evidence published in the journal Sports Medicine. Aidan Buffey, a researcher in the sport sciences department at the University of Limerick, showed that walking after eating throughout the day resulted in a 17 per cent greater reduction in blood sugar compared to sitting down. Preventing repeated large spikes and fast falls in blood sugar helps to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.