You don't need a super strenuous exercise routine to keep your heart healthy. If you're a woman, a new study shows, just one short burst of physical exertion a day can cut your risk of a heart attack or heart failure in half.

Even better, the exercise doesn't have to take place in a gym. Any high intensity activity such as quickly walking up flights of stairs, carrying heavy bags of groceries, doing yard work or running for the bus, can be a big benefit for your heart.

The trick is to engage in the activity for four to five minutes straight — with no breaks — an international team, led by researchers at the University of Sydney, found.

Women who said they didn't do any structured exercise but did in engage in vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activities like brisk walking or housework were less likely to experience a heart attack or heart failure.

The study, led by researchers at the University of Sydney, analyzed data on roughly 81,000 British middle-aged men and women who were part of the UK Biobank, a large-scale bio database and health research source.

Between 2013 and 2015, the volunteers wore an activity tracker for a full week for 24 hours a day. Their average age was 61. Participants were divided in two groups based on the amount they exercised. One group included over 22,000 participants who reported not doing any regular structured exercise or only taking a recreational walk once a week.

The second group included more than 58,600 participants who said they were regular exercisers or went for a walk more than once a week.

The researchers tracked the cardiovascular health of both groups from the week they wore the trackers until the end of November 2022. Details of any major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) were collected during this time.

After accounting for other possible contributing risk factors such as lifestyle, conditions or habits like smoking that increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, as well as other co-existing conditions and ethnicity, a clear association was found: Women who said they didn't do any structured exercise but did in engage in vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA) were less likely to experience any a major adverse cardiovascular event, including heart attack or heart failure.

Even women who averaged only about three and a half minutes of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity, but who had no formal exercise daily, were:

  • 45 percent less likely to have any type of a major cardiovascular event
  • 51 percent less likely to have a heart attack
  • 67 percent less likely to develop heart failure

Short bursts of exercise made less of a difference in the heart health of men who engaged in vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity.

As few as four minutes of high intensity routine activities — such as carrying heavy shopping bags — could reduce the risk of heart attack by as much as 50 percent.

There was a clear association between short bursts of high intensity physical activity and heart health, but because this was an observational study, it could not prove a cause-and-effect relationship. It was also limited by the fact that an average of 5.5 years passed between the activity tracking recordings and the collection of data for this study and unidentified risk factors might have developed in the meantime. It should point the way, however, for couch potatoes to conveniently counteract some of the ill-effects of being sedentary. As the researchers said in a press release,

“VILPA may be a promising physical activity target for major cardiovascular events prevention in women unable or not willing to engage in formal exercise.”

Even though these findings weren't as strong for men, short bursts of vigorous exercise daily are likely to also benefit guys who tend to be sedentary.

Examples of vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity include:

  • Taking the stairs instead of the elevator and walking briskly up them
  • Carrying heavy shopping bags quickly
  • Doing quick bursts of jumping jacks while on hold
  • Increasing your walking pace to a brisk walk when you need to get somewhere fast
  • Sweeping the walk or doing other yard work vigorously
  • Playing energetically with your kids during playtime
  • Performing quick bursts of push-ups against a wall while watching TV

The study is published in The British Journal of Sports Medicine.