Making use on the smaller slots in our day or incorporating them in to our daily living to little the little things add up over the days, weeks and months
How do we squeeze some extra movement in our day, after all little tweaks can add up to big changes over the days weeks and months!
Extra flight of stairs here, parking the car a little further away there, it all adds up and the impact can be huge. What can we do in the smaller time slots we have to help our progress?
Let’s start with the basics, all movement counts, yep all of it.
Hoovering – Yep
Washing the car – yep
We could go on, and on….
When we get someone in the gym for the first time our focus is always on starting movement off, it doesn’t need to be long, heavy or even tiring.
Instead we just look for muscles to be activated, our heart rate to go up and get a bit of a sweat on, this is different for everyone, much like adding movement into our day.
Tactics, game plans, and organising!
No running example this week, people examples.
Person A
Drives to work, has a desk based job and a 30 minute lunch break – think that a goos stock example.
We need to park the car, can we park it further away? This might be the other side of the carpark, a different carpark or a street further over from the office. This is going to add a few more steps top the count. Made up maths incoming!
Other side of car park +/- 100 steps (500 p/w)
Different car park +/- 300 steps (1500 p/w)
Different street +/- 500 steps (2500 p/w)
These might be per trip or per day, either way they can easily add extra to our daily and weekly totals.
This can also be added in when working from home, a nice stroll just before work – kind of like we are walking to the office!
Person B
Works from home, desk based with a semi-flexible day.
Whilst we could include the morning ‘walk to work’ it might not be a straight forward, instead could we do a few trips up and down the stairs?
After all we need a break, even just going top and down 1 per hour will add to our steps and flights climbed (if you record that, cheeky follow up to our fitness tracker write-up!)
Going back a little while, I had a client who was based in a fast paced war environment, they were pedal to the metal whilst at their desk, however the company had a strict 1 hour away for lunch policy (forward thinking, ensuring staff had to have a break), we started doing 1 minute of stair climbing at the start of lunch and 1 minute at the end – after a few months this became 7 minutes at each end!
As always, one size doesn’t fit all, we could break this up into multiple 1 minute chunks through out the day or hourly, how about using the hours of the work day.
7 hours left – 7 stair reps
6 hours left – 6 stair reps
5 hours left – 5 stair reps
And so on, nice little reward for the final hour.
Remember it doesn’t need to be fast, of course as we progress it can become a little faster, further, longer etc.
Few more examples to help get the ball rolling:
Walking whilst on phone calls
Walking meetings with co-workers
Park further away at the shops and carry shopping back to the car
Add stretching breaks while at your desk (or move away to perform them)
Walk on the spot during adverts
Add some squats whilst getting things out of low cupboards
There are lots of ways to include more movement into our days, need some help adding a few little bits into your day? – Chat to one of the team here at SF info@spikefitness.co.uk or 07597215652.