Keep Warm & Fit This Winter
Winter is very much making its presence known, making it all too easy to slip into hibernation mode, i.e. large portions of comfort food favourites, accidental late morning snoozes, and curling up to watch endless box sets evening after evening. Of course, a little bit of winter comfort now and then is only healthy, but before long you will start to feel sluggish. Building in even a few minutes of gentle exercise to your day will help boost your endorphins and get you ready for anything winter can throw at you. Here are some ways that you can sneak in a few minutes of mood-boosting exercise, without venturing out into the cold.
Yoga Isn’t Just For Hippies
Many of us work desk-based jobs, which can wreak havoc with our backs. Your back provides stability for the entirety of your body, which is why having a bad back can feel so debilitating. Thankfully it’s incredibly easy to look after your back and you can do so in a surprisingly short amount of time. This five-minute filler yoga was designed for creaky poker players but is equally as good for busy parents who need a quick restorative stretch.
Many of us are put off yoga by the hippy stereotype and whilst, for some, aligning your chakras may be a step too far, the fundamentals of yoga needn’t be prohibitively spiritual. Yoga will teach you how to correct your posture, align your spine, and will help to release the tension that we all hold in our muscles. Approach with an open mind and you’ll be surprised how much a simple morning sun salutation can do to improve your physical and mental wellbeing.
High-Intensity Interval Training
Whether you’re busy at work or busy being a parent or, as it is for many of us, busy with both, finding the time to exercise can feel like a luxury in time that you simply don’t have. Setting yourself goals to carve out a couple of hours at the gym every day simply isn’t realistic for most of us, but sneaking in a quick five minutes here and there? Everyone can achieve that.
High-intensity interval training or HIIT for short has been all the rage for a while now, and the reason it’s stuck around for so long is that it genuinely works. This form of exercise requires you to raise your heart rate quickly, for just a minute or two at a time, then allow it to come back down, before ramping it back up again. Joe Wicks provides lots of videos in this style for free which are good to follow along to if you’ve got a small chunk of time. However, if you really have only got five minutes, then try doing jumping jacks, burpees, high knees running, and skipping for one minute each with a fifteen-second break in between. By the end, you’ll be out of breath and the endorphins will be flowing!
Resistance Training
Heavy weights and family members getting under your feet are not conducive to a peaceful, or safe, environment. If you want to see those gains but are terrified of dropping a dumbbell on one of your loved ones, then resistance training could be the answer. This is the only suggestion that you’ll need the kit for, but a set of bands won’t set you back a lot of money. The strong elastic in the bands makes you work against your own body weight, with the effects of lifting weights, but in a much safer way for you (and anyone around you!)
Resistance training doesn’t have the same immediate effect as HIIT, but it is exactly the kind of thing that you can do whilst completing other tasks. Putting resistance bands around your ankles and crab-walking whilst cooking the dinner will make everyone laugh and tone your thighs at the same time. Ironing with one hand and doing bicep curls with the other hand could also be good for the well-coordinated. Use your imagination and, if worst comes to worst, stick on the TV and do a workout in front of your favourite show.
