Are you trying to keep fit but find that the challenges of everyday life don’t leave much time for lengthy exercise sessions? Then we have just the right thing for you! Try our 7 everyday tips and you can easily incorporate your fitness session into your daily routine:
1. Use your break times
Use short breaks in work for mobility exercises. This will help you to activate the parts of your body that have “gone to sleep” and provide some relaxation for a short time.
Shoulder movements are a classic way of exercising the back of the neck and shoulder areas: Allow your arms to hang down loosely and move the shoulders forward and backward in circular movements. Then pull the shoulders up, keep them there briefly and drop them again. The important thing here is that the movement should really come from the shoulders.
2. Walk yourself fit
It sounds so easy: Stand up and walk! But often we don’t walk enough, particularly in our daily lives. And yet even if you’re in an office, you can use every walk to the printer or the toilet to do an extra lap. You can increase your walking in your lunch break by taking a long walk in the fresh air, which will also boost your energy for the afternoon too. If a simple walk is too boring for you, then turn your stroll into a power walk. Simply speed right up for 5 minutes now and again and walk fast.
3. Cycle yourself fit
Maybe walking everywhere isn’t your thing – so get on your bike! You can use even short distances for a little fitness session without losing much “travel time”. Your leg muscles will thank you for it, but you’ll really get your cardiovascular system going too.
4. Conquer the mountains of everyday life
So, you live on the 5th floor without a lift? Great! Then you’ll be doing your daily full body workout automatically. Climbing stairs is always a good form of strength and endurance training for the whole body. So you should use the stairs wherever you can and abandon the lift or escalator. Vary your speed sometimes; going upstairs quickly will really boost your endurance.
5. Wait yourself fit
Not another red light! Or you have to wait another 5 minutes until the next train? Perfect – you can even use the waiting time for short muscle and mobility exercises. You could start, for example, with a little leg and bottom workout. For your legs: Shift your weight slowly onto the balls of your feet until you’re standing on tiptoe, and hold the position for 3 seconds. For the best posture, pull in your tummy too, and keep repeating this until the train comes. If you have to wait a little longer, follow it with the bottom exercise: As you’re standing up, tighten your bottom muscles, count to 20 and release. Repeat until the train arrives.
6. Drink yourself fit
- The German Nutrition Society (DGE) recommends drinking 1.5 to 2 litres of water a day. But we often don’t drink enough in everyday life. Particularly when your activity level rises, you should take even more care to remember to drink enough fluids to keep your body working perfectly. So you should make sure that you always have a glass of water on your desk and have a water bottle with you when you travel.
PS: If you want to go plastic-free, Esbit has a great selection of stainless steel water bottles.
7. Keep at it
The most important thing with any exercise is regularity. To start with, it will probably be more difficult to incorporate all our tips into your daily life. The brain has to work quite hard to break out of its normal routine. But stick at it, it’s worth it. After just a short time, your exercises will become second nature to you and you’ll do your training sessions without thinking about it. And if you’ve forgotten a particular exercise – that’s no problem, the next red traffic light is just around the corner. So – let’s get training!
Photo: Linds Henwood (Unsplash)
Text: Anika Piecuch
