No Time For The Gym? Try These 10 Creative Exercises At Home
Many times, gym classes are inconvenient also expensive, so we’ve put together several of the best home exercises that are inexpensive, take the least amount of time and can ever be done in front of the PC monitor if need be.
Surprisingly, regularly using our mental firepower aids not only our physical well-being but our cognitive abilities as well. Some even claim it consumes calories.
1-Take Extra Steps
Not everyone has a flight of stairs in their home, so we suggest the next best thing: make a point to get in as many extra steps as you can. Be it by putting away your groceries in the pantry and then intentionally doubling back on your path from the bedroom to the pantry again, the main thing is adding as many extra steps to your daily routine as possible.
The Centers for Disease Control(CDC) recommends you intentionally put in an extra 150 minutes a week by really not doing much other than taking those extra steps on a daily basis.
2- “Get Up And Move It!”
With three hours on average spent by Americans each week just watching TV, use the commercial breaks as automatic triggers to get up and start walking in place.
3- Island Ballet
By the time water boils on the stove, you could have stood on your toes to work your calves or done deep knee bends to tone the shape of your thighs.
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4- Sofa or Chair Squats
One public health professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana says: “Just trying to stand more throughout the day and disrupt those long periods of extended sitting will provide health benefits.”
5- Stair Push-Ups
If you’re lucky enough to have stairs at home, then face the staircase and place your hands shoulder-width apart on a step. Now, lowering yourself slowly, push back up. You can also do this at your favorite armchair using the chair instead of a step. According to one 2008 study, 25 percent of the U.S. population reported zero leisure-time physical activity or no activity at all.
6- Chair Dips
Because of radiation level emitted from computers and PC monitors, it is recommended that we take a break every 20 minutes to one hour. This writer has installed an app with an alarm clock going off for every 30 minutes triggering a response to get up and do some exercise.
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7- Singing Aerobics
Vacuuming or mopping provides good exercise if you exaggerate your movements going backward and forward. An estimated 40 calories get burned per every 15 minutes of mopping and if you sing while mopping, all the better.
8- Activity Bursts
One Mayo Clinic reports indicates that high-intensity bursts of activity also provide the same levels of benefits that longer exercise sessions provide. Try jogging to your mailbox and back before sitting down to open your mail.
9- Step Tracker Challenge
Set a goal to exercise with a friend or take along a step-tracking device to force some good exercise routines.
10- Make Like a Mountain or a Windmill
Traditional exercises of yoga or Chinese Tai Chi do wonders to help relax your mind, emotions and body while still consuming calories. You can’t get simpler than the Chinese Windmill as you stand with your feet wide apart and simply swing your torso and arms from right to left and back again.
Some Additional Tips:
Experts at the American Heart Association recommend at least 30 minutes of exercise daily such as Tai Chi, an ancient Chinese exercise. Involving slow, relaxing movements that are said to lower blood pressure almost as well as moderately intense aerobic exercises, this form of practice is growing in popularity across the globe.
