This How To Work Out When You Work At Home post is sponsored by DeskCycle. All thoughts and opinions belong to Drugstore Divas.
I work at home, which is great because I’m able to spend the entire morning in my pajamas and no one is there to tell me I can’t. The bad part about it, though, is that I don’t have much movement. I’m not getting up to go to the other side of the building for meetings, I’m not walking to my car to go out to lunch with my coworkers, there’s none of that. So I really have to be creative if I want to get my daily steps in. If you work at home, or if you’re a stay at home mom or wife, this post is for you.
How To Work Out When You Work At Home
1. Walk around town.
I take a long walk through our community every day. Pete and I used to go when he got home from school, but it’s so hot out now so we have to go after dinner instead. We have the same route, so I know exactly how long it takes and how many steps it will be. It’s hard to power walk when it’s so warm out, but if we do, it’s a great workout.
If you know your neighbors, you can set up a specific time each day for a neighborhood walk. Those people are often around, so you’ll often have someone to walk with. When you can go with someone else, it holds you accountable — plus makes it go a lot quicker.
2. Set up a gym a home.
After our walks, I’m done. But that’s just Pete’s warm up. He will go into our bonus room and finish his workout. He has a chin up bar, a bench, weights, and a mat, and that’s enough for him to get in a great workout. That’s better than paying for a gym membership because one, it’s free every month and two, you don’t waste any time traveling from home to the gym. It’s just down the hall.
What’s great about this is it also doesn’t close. You don’t have to worry about running out to the gym on the gym’s schedule. If you’re like me, you work all hours of the day, so you might not be able to get to the gym during operating hours. And when you finally get there, all the machines you want might be taken by others who finally found time to get to the gym.
3. Do chores.
No one really likes to vacuum. I love how our house feels after it’s vacuumed, but no one (I know) ever gets excited over having to vacuum. Look at it like a way to work out instead. It’s great cardio, especially if you’re like me and have to carry the vacuum up and down a flight of stairs. I vacuum the left side on the way up and the right side on the way down so at least those get done too.
Don’t have carpets? Clean your showers! I hate that chore too, but it is a really great arm workout. Throw the curtains in the wash and use that time to really scrub down the walls and tub. And if you don’t have a laundry machine in your house and have to scrub the curtains yourself, that’s great for your arms.
4. Get the DeskCycle.
So I pretty much love the DeskCycle. If you follow me on Snapchat, you actually saw a video of it in my Snapchat story yesterday. It’s something I wanted when I worked at my last office job, but I never picked it up. And good thing because this is heavy (okay, Pete says it’s not but it is to me). Basically, it’s the pedals of a bike, attached to a base, that sits under your desk. You can just pedal all day long. There’s an attachment that tracks your time, distance, speed, and more. If you really are stuck sitting at your desk all day long, you can get in some exercise with the DeskCycle under your desk.
Pete actually loves it. He’s the healthiest person I know, and gets in a ton of exercise — at work and at home, and he is still thinking about grabbing a DeskCycle for himself when he’s home doing paperwork.
You don’t actually need a desk for this either. If you’re in the living room folding laundry while you’re watching television, just pull this out from under the coffee table. Get in a little exercise while you’re binge watching Netflix. The show will distract you and you’ll be getting some exercise in without even thinking about it.
What tips do you have for how to work out when you work at home? Be sure to leave them in the comments. And if you have checked out the DeskCycle, be sure to let us know that in the comments too.