Have you ever had a weekend to yourself, sitting on the sofa, with your favourite foods, and only moving for necessities like bathroom breaks, getting a drink, or wiggling your TV remote to signal to Netflix that you have indeed been watching for the last four hours? We’ve all been there.
However, during these moments of relaxation, we often feel guilty about not spending our free time doing something active. We all love the sound of physical activity and the post-exercise glow we feel after completing a strenuous workout, but getting off the sofa to complete it is another story!
Despite calling one of the best places to go for a hike in the UK home, no matter what the season, we always have a reason for putting off our fitness regime, whether it’s too cold to go for a run or we don’t have enough money for a gym membership. Yet, often, it’s not getting started that is the challenging part; it’s maintaining it!
And rest assured, it’s never too late to start, either! So, if you’re a self-diagnosed ‘lazy’ person who’d like to improve their fitness regime, we’ve created this guide outlining how to do so without feeling like it’s the most boring thing in the world – keep reading to find out more.
Work Out At Home
Yes, you read that correctly. It is possible to work out without leaving the comfort of your home (or even your sofa!), so whether the weather is less-than-inspiring or you can’t be bothered to face the public – if you’re stuck at home but still want to work on your fitness there are several ways that you can do so.
Fortunately, if you’re an introvert at heart, you can complete several exercises and home workouts within your home’s four walls. From turning on some upbeat tunes and dancing around your living room and taking an online fitness class to creating a callisthenics home workout and even doing high-energy housework, there are various ways that you can avoid the commute to the gym.
Even when you’re housebound, moving your body can reap massive benefits for your mental and physical health, including lifting your spirits and keeping you in tip-top condition. However, just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean you shouldn’t treat it like any other workout, which means ensuring you keep yourself hydrated and don’t overdo it.
If you’re unsure where to start or whether you can safely do a type of exercise within the comfort of your home, consider approaching your personal trainer, fitness coach, doctor, or another fitness expert for tailored advice before attempting it. Doing so will ensure you stick to your fitness regimen and do not get hurt!
Hire A Personal Trainer
Most of the time, one of the main reasons we’re so reluctant to go to kickstart our fitness regime is that we don’t want to go by ourselves. However, there is a way to get company at the gym without forcing our friends or family members to tag along with us, and that’s by enlisting the services of a personal trainer.
People hire personal trainers for various reasons, whether they’d like to reach a specific weight loss goal or if they’d like support using the equipment; the list goes on and on. However, not only can they be beneficial for making your workout safer, more effective, and more fun your trainer is also your cheerleader and is there to celebrate your success every step of the way.
Having someone backing your corner can be a wonderful feeling, especially when it comes to bettering yourself, and it motivates you to push yourself further to achieve your desired fitness goals. Who knows? Once you’ve worked alongside one for a few months, you might find a hidden desire to give back to others what your trainer has done for you.
If this is the case, you can enrol on a personal trainer course like the ones offered by The Fitness Group, which can equip you with the skills needed to become a personal trainer and help others reach their fitness goals. Consider visiting their website to learn more about their personal training courses and how they could help you improve your fitness regime today.
Don’t Stress Over How Long You Spend Exercising
When trying to improve our fitness regimes, we often stress about the quantity of physical activity we’re getting, not the quality. In reality, it doesn’t matter how often we get our bodies moving; all that matters at the start is getting them moving in the first place. It doesn’t matter if we spend an hour or fifteen minutes getting our daily workout in, so long as our exercise is of a high standard.
For example, you might have set yourself the target of doing five laps of your local park, yet when you got there, you might have only been able to manage three. Although you might feel disappointed that you didn’t complete the target you set out to achieve, the only thing that matters is that you’re doing something that will help you regardless of whether you reached your goal.
As the famous saying goes, you must ‘look before you leap’, as the last thing you want is to over-exert yourself and risk a potential injury, which could set you back further on your fitness journey than you were when you started! Instead, set a realistic target, which you can always increase if it’s too easy.
Aim To Stand Up Every Hour
If you’re one of the 56% of UK working professionals who don’t have to commute to a physical office every day, there’s a good chance that you spend much time at home (even when you’re not feeling lazy!). Due to this, even when we get time to ourselves, we’re hard-pressed not to collapse onto our sofas and stay there for the rest of the day.
However, despite how tempting the urge to do this might be, we must move our bodies even when we don’t feel like it. Sitting all day promotes laziness and can lead to bad posture later in life; therefore, it is essential to aim to stand up and move around every hour to prevent these problems later in life.
Even if it’s something as minor as pacing around the kitchen while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil, or going to pick up your lunch yourself instead of ordering Deliveroo (again) to your door. It could be anything that allows you to stretch your legs for a few extra minutes is better than being sedentary for the entire day!
Get Moving During The Adverts
Nothing is more annoying than getting to the climax of ‘EastEnders’ and having the action interrupted by an advertisement break. Yet, instead of spending the next four minutes sitting on your sofa munching your way through a pack of biscuits and checking your social media for updates, why not spend it doing a series of mini workouts?
Unless you’re using a streaming platform like Netflix or Now TV, where there aren’t any advertisements between soap episodes throughout the show, you could complete a HIT workout during each advertisement break.
Whether it’s a circuit of press-ups, lunges, burpees, squats, or any other cardiovascular exercise, you’ll soon find yourself breaking a sweat and making better use of those pesky ads! Although if you’d like to start seeing a difference, we recommend leaving the packet of biscuits in the cupboard and only rewarding yourself with one every once in a while!
