Keeping to daily fitness goals becomes a challenge with work pressures eating into your “me-time.” No matter how well we plan our day in advance, with dedicated time slots for each of our activities, when work spills over, your exercise hour becomes the biggest casualty.
So how do you make up for lost time? Research has shown that people favour short exercises and are far more consistent with them as they think there is a lesser effort involved. In fact, if you devise at least three exercise modules in between your workday, you can meet your daily target easily.
1) You can do breath exercises for short spells in your busy day. Including certain breathing exercises and a light warm-up routine on a daily basis along with a short high intensity workout can be quite effective. I suggest deep, diaphragmatic breathing like the kapalbhati kriya of yoga, alternate nose breathing, also known as Anulom Vilom Pranayam. These are highly beneficial when done for even five minutes. You can even do a bit of tai chi, the ancient Chinese martial routine, that involves deep breathing, mindfulness and controlled movements, to relieve stress.
2) Plan a physical routine of no more than five minutes. Just climb a flight of stairs, do crunches while sitting on a chair, use your table to bend and stretch your spine, suck in your stomach and stretch your hamstrings, do slow jumping jacks or spot jogging. Slow jumping jacks are indeed beneficial. Usually, in a jumping jack, you jump with both feet off the ground, legs spread wide and the hands going overhead, and then returning to a position with the feet together and the arms at the sides. You can even do this one feet at a time. This is called a slow jumping jack. This helps you improve cardiovascular fitness, increase calorie burn, enhance strength, and promote overall functional fitness.
3) Do exercises that include inversions, back bends, side bends and stretching: Since disconnecting from the blue light emissions for a short period of time can be a great stress buster, you can easily do any of these intermittently at your workstation.
3) Chair dips, squats and leg extensions: The dynamic chest stretch is effective. Stand or sit up tall in your chair with arms stretched out straight in front of your body. Keep your palms together and move your arms out to your sides at a steady pace. Rotate your palms upwards and push your thumbs as far back as is comfortable, hold for ten seconds. Return to the start position and repeat three to five times.
Squats can be done even in the corridor against a wall. Keep your chest up and your back in a neutral position. Bend at the knees and hips so that you move into a seated-like position with your thighs parallel to the ground. Return to the start position and repeat.
Keep a resistance band at your workstation as it is a great way to alleviate tension in your back and shoulders. Grasp each end in either hand and stand in the middle. Raise your arms so that the band becomes V-shaped. Slowly pull on either end. Squeeze the band tight and release.
