Are you stuck inside with nowhere to go? Did your gym membership expire while you were sitting on your couch playing gears of war with total strangers?
Don’t worry! There is still time to start your way to a healthier you! And best of all, you can get headed in the right direction without ever leaving your own four walls.
Exercise is important for a large number of reasons, some of them physical, some of them emotional, sociological. There are many who even attribute a level of spirituality to a good exercise routine.
These are great benefits. And they can be yours if you will take the initiative to exercise the major muscle groups found in your body with household items.
First off there are a number of common, but effective exercises that one can do with no extra equipment at all. These exercises include but are not limited to push ups, sit ups, wall sits, lunges, squats and a large number of cardiovascular exercises.
To increase the intensity and therefore the result of any of these exercises you can introduce any type of free weight. Household items that fit the bill are heavy books and containers of liquids such as milk jugs filled with water.
For pushups it could be helpful to have a helper, such as a child, place the free weights on your back once you are in the push up position. An other fun and challenging variation could even be to have that same young child sit on your back while you flex you biceps brachii and pectoralis major into a perfect push up!
To exercise your abdominal external oblique you could try doing situps in which the elbows are brought up to the opposite knee in turn. Again, for a more intense workout try adding more weight.
With sit ups this can be done by holding the weighted object close to the chest while performing the same basic motion as the previously described sit up.
The latissimus dorsi is the muscle group found in the back that corresponds to the abs. A great exercise can be done while lying on the stomach that can exercise and strengthen this muscle group.
This exercise is very much like a sit up in execution except that you will be lying on your stomach. To perform there ‘back ups’ or ‘supermans’ as they are varying called, you will lay on your stomach and raise the top half of your body repeatedly or hold in a raised and flexed position for a number of seconds before repeating.
Variations to this exercise may include holding your improvised free weight with both hands straight ahead or alternately in one hand with the are extended perpendicular to the body.
And of course, there’s always the treadmill. Running on one of these is actually really great exercise, and it’s softer on your body than running outside.