08/02/2012

Christina Elston

Health experts and a growing number of employers are hoping to lure adults into a new form of "recess," to get them back in the habit of moving so they sit less and stay healthier. And it's fun!

Jennifer Yruegas knew that it was working when she beat all her 10-year-old son’s friends at “four square.” Not the social media check-in platform – the playground game. And Yruegas didn’t perfect her four-square skills during school recess like the third graders she’d bested. She learned to play during recess – at work!

Admit it, you just smiled at that idea. Health experts and a growing number of employers are counting on that to lure you, and eventually your entire family, into their updated idea of “recess,” which they say could get Americans in the habit of moving more and sitting less, and clamp down on the annual waistline expansion that is endangering our health.

Why Recess?

Toni Yancey, M.D., MPH, a professor in the Department of Health Services at UCLA and author of Instant Recess: Building a Fit Nation 10 Minutes At a Time (University of California Press, 2010) says that most adults remember recess as the best part of their school day. It’s the opposite of the negative feeling people connect with “exercise.” “It captures the idea of fun and stress relief and exuberance, and linking that with physical activity,” she says.

It’s also a great way to hook the non-athletes among us, because during recess as a kid, “even if you weren’t an athlete, you went out and ran around,” Yancey says.

While a 10- to 20-minute recess break every day is enough to help stop the “average, sedentary, overweight adult American” from gaining the pound a year that most do, this tiny boost in activity has lots of other benefits as well. It improves mood, brain function and morale, and can even help foster cooperation among co-workers.

But the biggest benefit of regular “recess” could be in the habit itself. Recess builds people’s confidence, makes them more comfortable moving and more likely to move during the rest of their day. Data from ongoing studies is even beginning to show that it makes people more active during their after-work hours, Yancey says. “We think that kind of makes sense, because they become more fit and exercise becomes more comfortable.”

Recess at Work

At first Yruegas didn’t see how recess would fit into her 12-hour days as General Counsel for KEEN, a manufacturer of outdoor casual footwear, bags and socks. She says her first thought upon hearing about her employer’s new “Recess is Back” initiative was, “Well, I’m very busy.” Her days were already packed, and employee-participation programs she had seen at other companies tended to be gimmicky and short-lived.

But she says the recess program, put together with Yancey’s help, fit in well with KEEN’s already-playful company culture, and before she knew it she found herself discovering four square, a game she says she missed out on as a child, “which I think I would have been a huge talent at.” Soon she was playing at least one or two games a day, but hid her new skills from her son, Logan, who regaled his parents every night with tales of his four-square adventures on the playground.

On the last day of school, she joined a four-square game with Logan’s class, emerging victorious and earning her son’s pride and “street cred” with his classmates. “The only kid out there I couldn’t beat was Logan,” she laughs, “which was a good thing because it would have made the car ride home difficult.”

KEEN eventually took its program on the road, and during the past year they have presented “Recess Is Back” to 170 different companies and built a social media fan base of nearly 70,000.

You Can Do It

At KEEN headquarters, there are mini-baseball and four-square courts right in the center of the workspace. But you don’t need to convert a conference room to make recess happen where you work.

KEEN makes its program available to all. The Recess Is Back section of keenfootwear.com includes a complete tool kit for bringing recess to your office in a big, institutional way. But it also has fun ideas for your own, personal recess breaks. These include everything from tree climbing and “mime ball” (for those who want to play baseball but have no equipment) to 10-minute walks and quick yoga poses. Or you could grab some chalk and try a playground game like four square or hop scotch in the parking lot.

The “at work” section (keenfootwear.com/recess-at-work) also has fun videos that set an office-friendly workout to a dance beat. These are similar to videos Yancey created, which are available through JourneyWorks (www.journeyworks.com/Instant-Recess/products/255/). Yancey says these are fun enough to distract people from the fact that they are moving, and are designed to work for even exercise beginners. “People kind of auto-adjust the intensity to fit their own fitness level,” she says.

Whatever you do at recess, try to move at the intensity of a brisk walk, the kind of pace that would let you finish a mile and a half in 30 minutes. And just like recess at school, recess at work is a whole lot more fun if you’re out there with friends. All you really need to get you started is one other person. Commit to having recess breaks together for a week, and you’ll see that it’s contagious. “People see it and they want to participate,” says Yruegas.

Meetings offer another recess opportunity. For an assembly that’s planned to last a few hours, approach the organizer and offer to bring in a video as an “activity break” that will give folks a chance to stretch. There are probably snacks and drinks at your meeting. Why not a little movement?

When people give it a try, they’ll likely say things like, “I haven’t moved this much since gym class.”

“First of all, it’s a wake-up call,” says Yancey. “But then people find that they could do it, and it wasn’t so bad, and they didn’t break a sweat and have to go change their clothes, and they could do it again. It builds their confidence.”

Taking It Home

At work, Yruegas tries to do one or two recess breaks a day, and she has found that it actually helps her get things done. “By taking that 10-minute break I am so much more productive when I come back than if I tried to power through with a cup of coffee and a Coke,” she says. She finds herself doing twice the work with less time to do it.

And now she and her family have recess at home as well – including four square. “We’ve figured out how to play it with three,” Yruegas says. “Because Logan is so fit, we make him cover two squares.” They also play croquet and hula hoop together, and hike. And if the weather gets in the way “we just do something crazy inside. If it’s time for dinner, we’ll see who can do the most jumping jacks before we sit down,” she says.