Fitting exercise into a busy routine can be difficult, but what people don’t always realize is that there are simple exercise opportunities all around us in our daily lives. Without further ado, here are 10 easy ways to get more exercise without going to the gym.
Always take the stairs: Minimal amounts of exercise can increase our body’s levels of a substance called GLUT4, which encourages calories from food to be stored in muscle cells rather than as body fat. That means that even a minute marching up a flight of stairs helps.
Walk a bit more: Forget taking an Uber to your friend’s house and take a walk instead. In our increasingly-sedentary lives, any amount of walking is good.
Stand up more: Sitting down puts your body in neutral – it constricts circulation, slows your metabolism, shuts off muscles and tightens your connective tissues. Fortunately, there’s a solution: just stand up.
Do a big shop: Instead of online shopping, do your groceries yourself and carry your bags as if you were doing a farmer’s walk, which is a simple exercise that involves walking with a heavy object in each hand.
Sit on the floor to watch TV: Modern sofa technology has advanced to the point where you can remain essentially motionless through an entire TV show, but if you sit on the floor, you’ll be squirming, stretching, and changing position all the time, which is good for you.
Do the 10-minute squat every day: In many countries, the deep squat is still part of everyday life – it’s just how you sit, relax, or go to the toilet. People in the western world tend not to, but they should. Apparently, it helps enormously with your hip and ankle mobility.
Do an improbable number of push-ups: Want to do a number you’ve previously considered insane? Easy: First, divide the number you can comfortably do, chest-to-floor, by four. Now do that many every minute, on the minute, for 10 minutes.
Get a pull-up bar: Clip a bar to your door frame and start pulling. There are few things that give your core muscles as much exercise as this.
Help other people: Help a friend move into a house and treat it as a training day. Altruistic fitness still counts as exercise.
Stop going through life with the minimum physical effort: Modern society’s done a good job of teaching us that saving effort is better, but this is not the case when it comes to physical activity. Move a bit more, and soon it’ll become more natural.
