Can you do 5-minutes of squats before your next meeting?

12 May

You start the week with good intentions: this time, you’ll stay consistent. You’ll follow the plan. You’ll do the exercises your PT gave you. Easy, right?

Then work happens.

Meetings multiply. Emails expand. Your calendar starts playing Tetris with your time blocks. Before you know it, five days have passed and your workout plan is still sitting quietly in your diary, untouched, twice rescheduled, never crossed off.

This is the cycle so many of us fall into: sitting too long, losing energy, relying on caffeine, and putting off movement until there’s “more time.”

But what if five minutes was all it took to start breaking that pattern? Take five minutes before your next meeting to move … to squat.

Benefits of Squats for Your Health:

We think of SQUATS as the something we do in the gym. But every time you sit down or stand up from your chair, you are using your squat muscles. The truth is, squats are one of the most useful movements we can practice, not just for fitness, but for function. They help us:

Develop stronger legs and glutes – Squats target the big movers: quads, hamstrings, glutes. They keep you powerful enough to climb stairs, carry bags, and stand your ground in long conversations.
Nudge our metabolism – Even a short set can get your blood moving and burn a few calories, which is more than most meetings can say.
Improve our flexibility – Each rep stretches and strengthens your tendons, muscles, and joints, making it a quiet rebellion against stiffness.
Balance and with coordination – That subtle shake you feel? It’s your brain and body remembering how to work together.
Trigger a hormone boost – Compound movements like squats stimulate muscle-building hormones, helping you stay strong and energised.

And with five minutes of squats before your next meeting, you can start waking up your legs, activating your muscles and allowing your blood to circulate and refreshing your body.

As Tom Platz said “The squat is the king of all exercises.”

Even done beside a desk, squats wake the body up in a way scrolling never will.

Swap a Snack Break for an Active Break Strategy for Remote Workers

Join the Challenge

A five-minute squat break can starting moving your into action, interrupting the autopilot of sitting and help you:

Shake off that afternoon fog without reaching for caffeine
Reclaim your posture from office-chair collapse
Send blood to the brain and signal "hey, we're alive!"
Boost energy without a single motivational quote
Make you feel just a little stronger than you did five minutes ago

Do 5 Minutes of Squats Before Your Next Meeting

If you have ever found yourself trying to cram a week's worth of exercise into the final five minutes before a personal training check-in, you're not alone. This week’s challenge is inspired by those weeks that disappear and you realise you’ve not exercised.

Here’s the challenge: Take five minutes before your next meeting to do squats. As many squats as you can, up to 100, or until the timer runs out. Whichever comes first.

Why? Because sitting is sneaky. Because the day can run away from you before you know it. And because sometimes, the only thing standing between you and your goals is five intentional minutes.

Here’s how to start:

Step 1: Look at your workday and choose when you’ll do it.
Pick a meeting or moment in your day where five minutes is realistically doable. This challenge works best when it has a clear slot to live in, not just “when I have time.”
Step 2: Schedule it and set an alert.
Add it to your calendar, set a phone reminder, or write yourself a visible note. Make it hard to ignore when the time comes.
Step 3: When it’s time, make space.
Push your chair back. Clear a little room. You don’t need gym clothes or a timer. Just a patch of floor and five minutes you were probably going to spend scrolling anyway.
Step 4: Start squatting.
Do what you can in five minutes. Rest when you need to. Aim to move, whether that’s 30 squats with breaks or a heroic dash to 100, the point is, you showed up. That’s how habits begin.

The next time your calendar gives you five minutes of breathing room, consider this: You could scroll. You could snack. Or you could stand up and take a five-minute active break to squat your way into the next hour with your legs awake and your brain just a little bit brighter.

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