Just Keep Moving!

A workout doesn’t have to be extreme or make you sore to be successful. Practically doing anything besides sitting or lying down is helping to counteract muscle loss and other health risks. We’re almost a month into the stay-at-home order, and if you’re feeling discouraged to stay active, you are not alone. But, before you nix your at-home workout because you don’t have weights or resistance bands, let me mention a few things that will hopefully change your mind, they certainly changed mine.

In 2015, NASA paid a man to stay in bed for 70 days to study the effects of low gravity environments for astronauts. As you can imagine, the first day he stood up he suffered from many symptoms such as loss in strength from muscle loss, increased heart rate, and loss of blood volume. Obviously this man experienced much more extreme symptoms than any of us will, but even a fraction of these symptoms can negatively affect your health. I have been sitting and lying down much more than I did before and I can feel my body reacting differently. It has been almost a month and I was getting discouraged by my home workouts to the point where I gave up. But I am realizing that even the slightest usage of your muscles can counteract the decrease in strength. Muscles at complete rest lose 10-15% of their strength per week. Muscles and bones will gradually lose mass, but even 30 minutes a day of muscle resistance can help decrease the risk of this loss. Push-ups are a great place to start as almost every major muscle in your body is engaged to execute this movement.

So before you think that your at-home workout isn’t doing a lot, remember that even a minimal amount of movement is beneficial. At complete rest, in just three to five weeks, your muscles will have lost nearly half of their strength. Sitting causes muscle ache, decreases your body’s ability to break down fat (burn calories), increases risk of serious health threats, and increases mortality risk.

Here is a fun idea to mix up your workout routine at home. Start by grabbing a deck of cards and assigning a type of workout to each suit. For example, clubs could be lunges, hearts could be pushups, spades could be sit-ups, and diamonds could be high knees. Assign your reps to each workout, shuffle the deck and start flipping over the cards one by one! Getting through the deck of cards is a great goal and will give you a sense of accomplishment.

- Rachel L.