Not the snack
you were expecting.

Short bursts add up. In a large UK study of adults who did no exercise, about three 1–2 minute bursts of vigorous activity a day went with roughly 40% lower risk of dying over about 7 years (an association, not proof). In a small trial of young adults, three 20-second stair climbs a day, three days a week, raised fitness by about 5% in 6 weeks. Not every snaq is vigorous, and the research on the best dose is still early. You're not replacing the gym. You're filling the gaps between sitting.

Only if you want to. Pick a workspace in Settings: 'At my desk' gives you seated, silent moves; 'Break room' adds standing, silent moves; 'I'm alone' opens the full library, including the sweaty ones.

The 10,000-step goal traces back to the 1960s, when Japanese walking clubs adopted the nickname of a pedometer made by the Yamasa company, the 'manpo-kei', literally the '10,000-step meter' (Tudor-Locke et al., Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 2008; Lee et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2019). The character for 10,000, 万, even looks a little like a person walking. It began as a slogan.

A 2024 review and meta-analysis of 14 cohort studies (119,436 adults aged 45–78) found lower risk of dying from about 3,000 steps a day, with the authors suggesting the best range may be 7,000–9,000. People taking 5,000–7,499 steps a day had about 39% lower risk than those under 5,000 (an association, not proof; Rodríguez-Gutiérrez et al., Preventive Medicine, 2024).

SnaqBreak converts every exercise into step equivalents based on the energy it uses, so strength work, isometric holds, and seated movements all count. The walking reference is about 100 steps a minute (Tudor-Locke et al., British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2018). Step equivalents estimate energy, not health benefit: the step research above was done on counted steps.

You set how often to move in Settings, from every 15 minutes to every 2 hours. We suggest every 30 minutes, the break interval used in several trials of interrupting sitting: for example, in 24 adults with type 2 diabetes, 3-minute breaks of light walking or simple exercises every 30 minutes lowered the blood-sugar rise after meals compared with sitting all day (Dempsey et al., Diabetes Care, 2016). That was a one-day lab trial, and the best interval is not settled, so pick what fits your day.

Every exercise gets a grade for how directly it has been studied. A: the exercise itself, done as a brief bout, was tested in a randomized trial or a large study. B: related exercises or short-term body measures (such as blood sugar or muscle activity) point the same way. C: the benefit is plausible, but nobody has tested this exercise as a snack. A grade shows how direct the evidence is, not how big the benefit is.

A stand-up reminder tells you to stop sitting. We tell you exactly what to do, for how long, with the research explaining why. Each snaq is a specific, graded exercise, not a vague nudge. The difference between "you should move" and "do 20 banded pull-aparts right now."

Most snaqs need nothing but you. A few use a resistance band, dumbbells, kettlebell, pull-up bar, jump rope, rebounder or under-desk bike. Tell us what you have in Settings and we'll only schedule what you can do.

Stretching is fine for comfort. But the research we draw on tested walking breaks, chair squats, holds and short vigorous bursts, not stretching, so that is what the library is built from. Every snaq shows how strong the evidence behind it is.

Yes. The free plan lets you browse the whole library and puts a set of seated exercises in your timer, with reminders every 30 or 60 minutes: enough to build the habit. Plus puts the full library in your timer across all three workspaces, adds every reminder frequency, Snaq Shuffle, exercise blocking and full progress tracking.