What more hours will never build

A run, a ride or a swim trains your heart and the muscles that move you. Five other things get little from it, however many hours you add.

Running lands the same stride on your bones thousands of times, and after the first few minutes, bone stops answering it. Riding and swimming barely load bone. On flat roads and in still water, your ankles rarely have to catch you. Your hips swing through the same small arc for hours. Your feet spend a run or a ride in shoes that do their work. Your breathing muscles work hard in VO₂max efforts, the hardest you can keep up for a few minutes, but tire over a long one.

Bone and range, how far your joints can move, grow from how often you work them more than from how long. Balance, foot and breathing work can be practised a few minutes at a time. So all five fit into moments you already have.

Researchers in London asked 96 volunteers to choose one new thing to eat, drink or do every day at the same moment. With each repetition it took less deciding, until it happened on its own. That took anywhere from 18 to 254 days, and missing a single day made little difference.

So hang each habit on a moment that comes round every day anyway: the kettle, the toothbrush, your shoes, bedtime.

Ten jumps as high as you can, on about three days a week, built bone at the hip and in the spine of young women. Smaller jumps need more days. Women of about 34 who hopped 50 times on one leg every day for six months gained 1.8 percent of bone at the hip. Those who hopped on two days a week gained nothing.

Jump only on a fresh day. A day is not fresh if you go long, or work at threshold, the hardest effort you can hold for about 20 minutes, or at VO₂max. The morning after is not fresh either. Tired legs jump lower, and the height is what counts. So jump at the start of a base run, ride or swim, the steady effort you could keep up for hours, or on a day off.

Warm up with a few small jumps. Then do ten as high as you can, forwards, backwards and to the side, on both feet or hopping from one foot to the other. Stand still for a moment after each landing, so the next one goes as high.

While the kettle boils, stand on one leg for a minute, then on the other. Every few seconds, set the free foot down and lift it again, so the support keeps changing. Once that is steady, close your eyes.

Every wobble is a small catch by the muscles around your ankle, and practised often, the catch gets quicker. A minute at the kettle is practice for the catch, not a balance session. Keep longer balance work to fresh days, when you learn fastest.

In the Netherlands, researchers followed 522 athletes aged 12 to 70 who had recently sprained an ankle. About half trained their balance at home on a wobbling board, three times a week for up to half an hour, for eight weeks. Over the next year, 22 percent of them sprained the ankle again, against 33 percent of the others. A minute on each leg puts the same kind of work into every day.

Brush your teeth in a deep squat, heels down, for the two minutes it takes, morning and evening. Hold the sink if you need to. Hours in chairs and on a saddle keep your hips bent and still. Range fades within weeks when you stop using it, and grows with how many days a week you come back to it. The toothbrush brings you back twice a day.

Before your shoes go on, spend a few minutes barefoot. Spread your toes and lift them. Press your big toe down while the other four lift. Then shorten your foot: keep your toes long and flat, and pull the ball of your foot back towards your heel, so the arch lifts. Finish with slow rises onto the balls of your feet.

That works the small muscles that hold up your arch. In a trial in Brazil, some of 118 recreational long-distance runners trained their feet for 20 to 30 minutes, three or four times a week. Over the next year, the others were 2.42 times as likely to get a running injury. Do that if you have the time, or put the same kind of work into a few minutes on most mornings.

Breathing is done by muscles, mainly the diaphragm, the sheet of muscle under your lungs, and the muscles between your ribs. Four runners could breathe in about a sixth less forcefully after a marathon than before it. Trained against a load, these muscles get stronger. Your lungs do not change.

This is the one habit that needs a small device, a hand-held breathing trainer whose valve makes each breath in harder. Morning and evening, sit down and take 30 hard breaths in against it, about two minutes each time.

In England, 16 trained male cyclists breathed in against either a real load or almost none. Those with the load then rode 20 and 40 kilometre time trials in the lab 3.8 and 4.6 percent faster than the others.

Do both sets every day for a couple of months, then keep the gain with two days a week. After nine weeks of training, adults who stopped lost some of the gain, and those who dropped to two days a week kept it.

Picture the same morning a few months from now. One leg at the kettle, a squat at the sink, your feet before your shoes, 30 breaths before the school run, and on a fresh day ten jumps before the pool. It adds up to about a quarter of an hour, in minutes that were already there.

Spend that time on more lengths, and you would swim a little better. Spent this way, it builds the bone, ankles, hips, feet and breath that a rocky trail, a long ride or a swim to the island will ask of you.