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Movement is essential for staying healthy. Aerobic exercise can help lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, and resistance training can help lower your risk of osteoporosis and other degenerative conditions.
As we all know, however, working a full 8-hour day leaves very little motivation to get to the gym after work. If you’re a night owl like me, morning workouts are virtually impossible. Well, you’re in luck because I have a workout for you that will allow you to get a quality workout in AND eat your lunch all within the hour you’re given.
Here’s a great workout that targets both the upper and lower body, and you can do it anywhere and without any equipment!
Instructions
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- Perform each exercise for 1 minute, and then rest for 30 seconds between exercises. Once every exercise has been completed, you’re done with one round.
- Perform each round 3 times.
- In order to tailor the workout to your endurance level, feel free to adjust the times. For example, do the exercise for 45 seconds and then rest for 45 seconds, or exercise for 30 seconds, and rest for 1 minute.
- You can also do the circuit as many or as few times as you want. Personalizing it will make it work best for you.
Workout
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For those of you new to a fitness journey, here are some variations to a traditional workout that you can use to decrease the intensity and difficulty:
- Continuous squats
- Wall pushups
- Walking lunges
- Caterpillar walks (start in pushup position à walk hands in toward legs à walk hands back out to pushup à repeat for 1 minute)
- Side squats (one knee bent into a squat, and the other leg stretched out to the side; alternate sides)
For our fitness veterans out there, try this workout
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- Jumping squats
- Clap pushups
- Jumping lunges
- Handstand walks
- Side shuffles
Remember, in achieving fitness, consistency and momentum are everything. Start simple and easy, and build up. Mix up exercises, and incorporate fun (e.g., play music, go outdoors, wear cool exercise gear). If you make it too difficult and tedious, you won’t keep it up. If you’re too tired for a lot of work, just do a little, but do something every day.
During these isolating, generally stay-in days, exercise is more important than ever for keeping us healthy in body and mind. Let’s get moving!
Shirley Ryan AbilityLab is now offering physician and therapy TeleHealth appointments to provide patients easy access to our expert clinical teams. New and existing outpatients can schedule and appointment at 312.238.1000 or here.
