He hopes the convenience of VILPA could boost the health and fitness of the 80 per cent of the population who currently do no regular exercise.
In a Canadian study he cites, inactive college students were told to hurry up three flights of stairs as quickly as they could in ascents that lasted about 20 seconds. That was the sum total of the workouts they performed three times a day for six weeks. By the end, the students increased their aerobic fitness by about 5 per cent and also boosted their leg power.
Short bursts of running up and down stairs increase aerobic fitness. Getty Images
“It’s a substantial benefit from something like one minute a day,” Stamatkis says.
But what about people who aren’t bone-idle students but already reasonably active? Could VIPLA help regular gym-goers to lose weight, say, or build muscle? “Absolutely,” he says. “It’s just a question of dosage.”
Someone who agrees with Stamatkis and certainly qualifies as a gym regular is personal trainer Paul Haslam. In the 1990s, he represented Australia in a series of international bodybuilding contests, setting his sights on the national heavyweight title.
What held him back was the size of his calves. Whatever he tried, he couldn’t bulk them up. So he began to supplement his training with micro-workouts. He committed to doing one set of 15 to 20 standing calf raises and a similar set of seated calf raises “on the hour, every hour for 12 hours a day”.
Mr Australia Paul Haslam at Sizzler Maroubra in 1993. Brendan Esposito
The additional effort paid off. Haslam promptly scooped the title of Mr Australia for two years in a row. And while he doesn’t believe it’s necessarily better than conventional training – both he and Stamatkis still hit the gym as well – he is convinced that exercise snacking can build muscle.
“High volumes with lighter loads can still elicit a hypertrophic response that assists in muscle gain,” he says.
While I’m not going to become a contender for Mr Australia even in my most lurid fever dreams, I can see the value of persevering with VILPA. Lacking the time or discipline to hit the gym every day, exercise snacking has proved surprisingly easy to incorporate into my working schedule. Plus it’s given me yet another form of procrastination.