Remembering to exercise while working from home can be challenging. If you can’t get yourself to a gym or sports center between working hours, you might not have much area to navigate staying healthy while leading a primarily sedentary lifestyle for the better part of the day.
However, staying active and physically healthy is crucial — not just for your body, but also for your mind. Apart from the obvious benefit of helping you keep the extra pounds off, exercising can help reduce stress, boost productivity, and provide an extra dose of much needed energy. With this in mind, here are five at-home workout ideas and techniques to help you keep your blood pumping even when you’re working from home and you can’t go out for a hike or hop on a treadmill.
Start Your Day With Lunges
Lunges are the perfect way to kickstart your energy and get some much needed stretching in before another day of work. During a lunge, your hip flexors are stretched, which increases their flexibility and counteracts the stiffness that might occur when sitting for extended periods of time.
Lunges have the added benefit of being a functional workout, meaning you can do them in the middle of other activities, such as picking something up off the floor. As regards weight loss, lunges can even contribute to speeding up your metabolism because they train so many lower-body muscle groups.
Incorporate Planking Between Meetings
Doing plank holds in between calls is a terrific exercise for fat loss, and the perfect habit to develop while working from home. It requires zero special equipment to perform; all you need to do is move your chair to one side and create some room so that you have enough space to stretch across the floor.
Planking is done by lying down facing the floor and using your forearms and toes to keep your head, torso, and legs in a straight line. Simply hold that position for 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute, or however long you can maintain a solid plank hold.
Jogging on the Spot
If you still haven’t gotten around to learning how to build habits like waking up earlier for a morning run, fret not — although it sounds a little funny, jogging on the spot during your work day is actually quite doable and definitely does the job when it comes to getting in some of that necessary cardio during the day.
Cardio includes any strenuous activity that stimulates your heart to pump blood around your body, keeping you awake and energized, and a strong 60-second on-the-spot jog may be just what you need to push through your next Zoom session. To get the full impact, try to raise your knees as high as possible while “running”.
Squats Without Leaving Your Workspace
There are various advantages to including squats into your WFH training regimen. For starters, squats can actually contribute to helping you sit more comfortably and uprightly. Additionally, when performed repeatedly, squats can develop your quadriceps, hamstrings and other muscles, and they require no additional gym equipment.
Your aim should be at least 10 chair squats a couple of times a day. This is a type of squat in which you crouch down to your chair and then stand back up. You’ll notice how much better your back and legs feel in no time, while simultaneously working off those fat deposits and increasing leg strength without technically leaving your desk area.
Also read: Gym Workouts vs Home Workouts: Which is better
Tricep Dips Throughout the Day
Tricep dips are an easy and effective way of increasing your arm strength while tightening and burning fat in your arms, and they can easily be done throughout the work day.
Begin by resting your palms on the floor or on a chair with your elbows bent, just a little behind your hips. Raise your hips a couple of inches with your feet firmly planted on the ground. Push your palms into the ground or chair until your elbows are completely extended, then return to the original posture and repeat. For optimal results, perform three sets of 10-15 repetitions each day.
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