The intensification of the animal industry is characterized by an increased indoor confinement, which is criticized as the public sees freedom of movement as one of the most important living conditions for farm animals. One way to assess restricted movement opportunities is to consider the locomotor activity of cows living in systems where movement is more or less restricted, ranging from tie-stall to pasture. This study seeks to evaluate the impact of a management practice aiming to reduce the level of movement restriction imposed to animals housed in such systems, and to promote solutions for on-farm implementation. The objectives of our study were to 1) quantify the locomotor activity of cows housed in a movement-restricted environment when provided opportunity for movement outside the stall with an exercise area (trials 1-6); 2) evaluate which modalities of access to exercise optimize locomotor activity: i. outdoor vs indoor access (trials 1-2), ii. a combination of different durations of outing (1 vs 2h) and sizes of the exercise area (20, 40, 60 and 80m²) (trials 3-4); and 3) investigate activities performed when cows have access to these areas (trials 1-5). A series of six trials involving different exercise modalities were conducted between 2018 and 2021, with between 18 to 30 tie-stall-housed lactating Holstein depending on the trial (n=141 cows overall), as a model for movement-restricted cows. A meta-analysis was conducted on the least square means of daily number of steps for the exercise vs non-exercise treatments, while generalized linear mixed models were utilized to determine the impact on the number of daily steps by the modalities. The activities performed when cows had access to the exercise area were also analysed by descriptive statistics. Providing access to an exercise area for 1h increased daily steps by 53% (304 steps; 95% CI: 215-393; P<0.001), with modalities such as type of access (167 more steps, around 20% outdoor vs indoor; P<0.001), space (146 more steps, around 16% for large vs small area; P<0.001) and duration of the outing (84 more steps, around 9% with 2h vs 1h; P=0.002), playing a role. Apart from locomotor activities, cows also spent 50-65% of their time idle; and engaged in other activities such as exploration (5-20% of time) or social behaviors (5%). Our study highlights that 1h of daily exercise has a major impact on the amount of locomotion performed, while allowing cows to engage a greater range of natural behaviors.