The phrase "a sort of exercise" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when describing an activity or task that resembles or functions like an exercise, but may not fit the traditional definition of one.
Example: "This activity is a sort of exercise to help improve your critical thinking skills."
Alternatives: "a kind of exercise" or "a type of exercise".
City Council officials played down the threat of further cuts, noting that past mayors have often called for potential cuts in the summer as a sort of exercise.
For the first-time Emmy nominee Kerry Washington, the red carpet rigmarole has become a sort of exercise in fashion's master class.
"Narrative plays a role in my work, and politics and language, so for me this is a sort of exercise in how far you can push a story, and how telling it to so many people can change the narrative or feed into it".
"Surrounding myself with them when I work becomes both a means of escape and a sort of exercise in manifestation for me".
It's a sort of lazy exercise of the imagination," she says with considerable distaste.
As a sort of warmup exercise, he began working on extinct animals.
This painting was a sort of warmup exercise for the the painting of a portrait of Pope Innocent X..
This painting was a sort of warmup exercise for the the painting of a portrait of Pope Innocent X.
Mr. Hughes, whose credits include the gripping Broadway productions of "Doubt" and "Frozen," has made a stilted attempt to reconceive the play as a sort of Brechtian exercise.
Tobe Nwigwe's #GetTwistedSundays video series named for the first installment, in which the Houston rapper freestyled as his then girlfriend, Fat (now his wife), twisted his hair was meant to be a sort of lyrical exercise.
In a sort of collective exercise of free association, all these events kept being described in images of fluid flow: a "spill" (especially in 2010, when the Gulf spill was on everyone's mind), a "flood," an "ash cloud," or, most persistently, a "meltdown". The image of meltdown was retrospectively applied to the financial crisis too.
