My apologies for the long silence. Last week I had a tough work week with 16 hour days which lead me to scribble down a quick blog on some scrap paper on the bus which has just made it's way onto my blog. Read on for my office exercise tips.
6/28/11 - 6/29/11 When work gets in the way of working out
I noticed that there are a lot of instances when work gets in the way of a workout. For example, I had a work crisis come up on Tuesday that left me working until 11:30pm just to wake up a few hours later and take the bus back to work. Wednesday was more of the same finishing everything by 11:45pm, went to sleep, and then woke up and went back to work. I kept telling myself that when I finished working I would go for a walk, but honestly going for a walk at midnight was not going to happen. And as you might have guessed, it didn't.
So this morning after two long nights, I thought I'd google some results for when there isn't enough time in the day to get in a work out. Even though I was tired, I do agree that even a small workout can get the energy flowing and after three cups of coffee I was ready to try just about anything.
I landed on an article called "Office Exercise" that people use if they are desk bound. I am one of those people whose entire job is on the computer so I have no choice but to sit down all day long. In the article, (find it here, Office Exercise ), they go over a couple of different exercises that you can do with a water bottle, chair, and a small weight, if you have one. I used a heavy book that I had at my desk. While I will admit I did it early in the morning before there were too many people around, I have to agree that it actually worked. I felt like I had worked the muscles moderately and then I got up and walked around the block outside which left me feeling a little more energized for the day.
Another option, which I've heard of people doing, is while you are on a conference call try to pace around the meeting room. Clearly you can't do that if there are people in the meeting with you, but I find I am on a lot of calls so I tried walking around the room which actually felt great.
And lastly, I started trying to get up out of my seat every 45 minutes and walk around the office or go talk to a co-worker to help get up and get moving. I also have my pedometer on each day to see if I can get in extra miles during the work day. I'm trying for 10,000 steps a day although on a typical work day I can usually get to about 7,500 or 8,000. The pedometer that I use is an Omron.
What I like about this pedometer is that not only does it calculate the steps you have walked in a day but it also shows the time, kcal, aerobic steps, and resets at midnight on it's own so there is no need to restart each day. The set-up is easy to with just a few calculations including your stride length. Ask a friend to help measure your stride at 10 steps to make it a little easier.
Looks like so far today I'm at, 1,816 steps which is about .85 miles.
On that note I better get going.
Do you have any good office exercises? Send me a comment on my blog and let me know so I can give them a try!
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