Keeping fit is so important, but not everyone catches the exercise bug. So here’s some good news: your body can benefit on lots of levels by just holding still and trying hard not to move.

Don’t believe me? Well, it’s been shown to lower blood pressure and improve strength and muscle stability. And it has a name – isometric exercise.

Isometric training involves simply contracting your muscles, which generates force without needing to move your joints. The more a muscle is contracted, the more forceful it becomes and the more powerfully we can perform a movement.

If you add weight to an isometric exercise, the muscle will contract even harder with greater benefit.

A plank and a wall sit – when you sit on an imaginary chair against the wall, knees bent at a 90-degree angle– are examples of isometric contractions.

These kind of movements result in a high degree of “neural recruitment”, because of the need to maintain the contraction. So they’re good at engaging specialised neurons in our brain and spinal cord, which are important for all movements.

The greater this level of neural activation, the more muscle fibres are recruited – and the more force generated, the stronger we get.

Isometric exercises are good for the heart. When a muscle contracts, it expands and compresses the blood vessels supplying it, reducing blood flow and raising the blood pressure in our arteries.

Then, when the muscle relaxes, blood surges into the blood vessels and muscle, bringing more oxygen and nitric oxide into the blood vessels – causing them to widen. This in turn reduces blood pressure. Over time, this action will combat stiffness of the arteries, and lower blood pressure.

There’s more. When blood flow is reduced during an isometric movement it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system and our fight or flight response, which increases blood pressure. But when an isometric exercise is done repeatedly over many weeks, there’s a lowering of sympathetic

nervous system activity. This means blood pressure is lower and there’s less strain on the cardiovascular system, which makes these exercises good for the heart.

To lower your blood pressure, do any isometric contraction for two minutes at around 30-50% of your maximum effort – it’s enough to trigger improvements.

Start doing the same exercise four times a day, three-to-five times per week beginning with a static squat, a wall sit or a plank then you can add weights or other isometric exercises.

Speak to a GP if you have any concerns. These exercises may not sound like they’ll achieve much, but they’re as effective as cycling and running. You’ll get improvements in blood pressure around four to 10 weeks after starting.

It’s a simple, short, low-intensity exercise that brings big benefits for heart health.