Tag Archives: spurts

Short Spurts

There are many schools of thought about how to exercise. Depending on your lifestyle, various fun activities will fit in, others won’t feel as comfortable, but it’s up to you to decide which ones work best for you.

I’ve been trying to focus on the short, relatively frequent exercises. This works best if I’m trying to focus, and in one place for a long time, like on my computer for the evening.

NOTE: This does not mean immediately get up from 5hrs of sitting idle to do 75 pushups in a row and go back for another 5hrs of idle sitting. No. Don’t do that. We’ve all heard of the person who goes out to shovel their driveway and has a heart attack or breaks their back because of the immediate strain. No, this isn’t good.

What this means, is that every 30 min to 1.5hrs or so, the motivated one gets up, loosens limbs with a nice stretch, grabs some rubber bands for a routine, or sits on the Swiss ball (exercise ball) and does some sit-ups. Even lift the bar or dumbbells for a rep or two.

exerciseball

After you finish this, you will feel your heart rate up, maybe even break a little sweat. This is good. This is what you want. You do want this feeling more than less, but any is better than none.

Keep in mind it is important when you’re doing this type of workout, your body is not completely warmed up, so one shouldn’t attempt to push their body to the max it can do, straining every muscle in the body.

Since your body isn’t totally warm, the motivated one will quickly find that this causes uncomfortable strain on muscles, or even pull muscles.

Another way to avoid this is to add a little more time to the beginning of the routine to do a longer warm up, really getting the muscles loose.

Ideally, however, as well as doing these short spurts, the fit person should look to get their blood pumping for at least 20 min at a time, at least once a day. This really isn’t long: a walk around to the park, 2 routines in the gym or 1 routine of yoga will all give you 20 min of exercise to keep you strong. Now go get em!