A new membership to Planet Fitness, weekly scheduled walks with friends, a season of recreational physical activities such as volleyball, pickleball, golf or hiking. The resources needed to stay involved in our lifetime fitness journey seems simple enough to use as tools to improve our everyday lives. The convenience of entering a local gym to utilize their equipment for resistance training give local gym attendees a place to exercise. Fitness classes offered at these local gyms offer group energy and the social aspect of being part of a fitness class where everyone is achieving similar fitness goals. Participating in recreational physical activities are fun and offers the chance to put the stress of life aside to focus on yourself. The regular adherence to these resources offers our bodies much needed strength, cardiovascular endurance, and stress reduction.
However, what happens when work throws overtime and extra deadlines at you to where you can’t make your gym workout you were looking forward to? Perhaps you come down with the flu. The last thing you want is to infect your recreational teammate or weekly walking buddies. Perhaps your kids need to be picked up from the new season of soccer games. The unlikely random occurrence of family members passing through town can be graced upon us as well in which we feel obligated to spend a few hours of the day with. These are examples of obstacles that can get in our way of our time that we devote to our lifetime fitness efforts.
Time is one of our most valuable tools for a full proof plan to make our lives healthier. The last thing we want is for our most valuable asset to be taken away from the random obstacles of life that disrupt our schedule. Fortunately, there are solutions to reinforce our fitness efforts when the times we have reserved for our fitness are taken away. Some quick fix solution we offer our personal training clients in Napa is to focus on simple “low hanging fruit” exercises when we see our time we have reserved for our fitness about to disrupted.
We coach our personal training clients in Napa to focus on 3 simple exercises: squats, pushups, and planks. Simply performing one set of squats in the comfort of your own home is enough to get blood flow going to the lower extremities. 10 repetition of squats will improve mobility of the hips, knees, and ankles. Pushups from the knees, on a countertop, or with knees extended off the floor activates the muscles of the upper extremity and core. Planks need to be help for only 20 to 30 seconds to reinforce the muscle of the core and postural muscles of the upper and lower back.
The beauty of such simple exercises is that they can be done anywhere: your house or waiting around outside. Why not take some time to perform these simple filler exercises? Just because you can’t make it to the gym or your regularly scheduled recreational activity doesn’t mean that we should forget about our fitness efforts for the day. It’s critically important to keep the body in a strong and athletic mode even when our schedule gets erratic. Performing simple exercises like the squat, pushup, or plank regularly will offer compounding strength and postural improvement results down the line when performed regularly throughout the week. The time we devote to the gym and regular physical activity is very important. However, ensuring to focus on getting some exercise in when time is limited is commonly overlooked. It’s this small attention to detail that keeps us strong so we can pick where we left off in the gym and normal physical activities when the busy times subside.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
