Incorporating more fitness into your life is only going to benefit you in the long-term. We’d all like to live a long and healthy life, and part of that is influenced by how we look after ourselves from the very beginning. Fitness and exercise is an important part to making sure you feel good and healthy right into your 80s. But incorporating that fitness can be difficult as you get older, especially when you have other responsibilities to maintain. Whether that’s your job or looking after a family, it’s still necessary to look after your health and to make it a priority. So here are a few ways to help get more fitness into your life.
Walk Wherever You Can
Start with walking because that’s something everyone does on a daily basis. Whether that’s walking around the house if you work from home or commuting into the city to get to your office. There are always other ways to get the most out of your travels and to walk more where possible. For example, it might be a good idea to get off your public transport a few stops earlier than usual and walk the rest of the way to work. Being able to add on twenty to thirty minutes of walking to and from the station or bus stop is going to make a significant change to how much exercise you’re getting. Have the attitude of walking wherever it’s possible. Whether that be when you’re on holiday or on the weekends where you might have nothing to do and so could go for a walk to your local park. Aim for a certain amount of steps that you want to hit each day, and once you start reaching them, extend it even further. The amount of steps you do can make a real improvement to your fitness, and it’s not even something you’ll even consider to feel like exercising.
Join The Gym
Some of us will find the gym a paradise, where others will hate it. The gym can be like Marmite for most of us, but it’s something worth trying if you’ve never done it before. Look at all the gyms you have locally to you and near the workplace if you fancy doing the gym before or after work. The main thing is that it needs to be a place that you can reach fairly easily. The reason why this is the case is because it helps keep you motivated, and if it’s a long way away, it’s not going to be somewhere you ideally want to travel to anyway. So making the effort to get there should be fairly pain-free.
Don’t get swept up with going to an expensive gym because you might find that the more budget-friendly options are just as good. It also depends on what type of equipment, classes, and benefits that you’d like. When joining a gym, don’t be fearful of asking for help if you don’t understand how a piece of equipment works. Everyone needs to start somewhere, and getting the form and exercise right is the most important thing to help it be effective for you.
Stand At Your Desk
Even at work, you can still be working out. Standing desks have become very popular in recent years because not only are they working your body throughout the day, they are said to help with your posture. A standing desk can usually alternate from standing to being something you can sit down with too, and so it’s great for those who might suffer with poor posture, but it also enhances your fitness levels too. You might want to ask your workplace if it’s something they’re able to provide, and if you work from home, these will usually set you back a few hundred. It’s definitely something that would be worth investing in for your health.
Take A Leaf Out Of Your Influences
Social media is a big world and a lot of our influences, that include our favorite NBA players or that celebrity you love who has their own reality television show. There’s individuals that you follow and love that might be working out or improving their fitness and so we can often take a leaf out of their book by doing what they do.
We can get inspired by those who we follow, like the NHL Retrospective, or seeing your idols do something you’ve maybe always wanted to do or achieve. So run with this inspiration and use your influence to help you work out or to find the fitness you enjoy.
Get A Personal Trainer
A personal trainer is someone who can provide you great motivation that you might need to get yourself into the mindset of working out. It’s not for everyone, but it can certainly kick your butt into gear when you’re trying to keep fit. When we’re working out, it’s very easy to cut ourselves some slack but when you have someone there training you, the pressure can be on another level. This might be something you need, and so it’s good to scope out your local personal trainers that are either based at a gym or can come out to you. When picking a personal trainer, remember that everyone is different. Just because a PT is popular, doesn’t mean you’re going to get on with them. Go for a consultation and see how you feel about them before you go committing to any payments.
Do Fitness-Orientated Gaming
Even though most gaming is done sat down in a computer chair, some gaming can actually benefit you fitness-wise. There’s lots of fitness-orientated gaming that you can do that gets you out of your chair and moving about. Virtual reality is also an advancement in technology that’s quickly infiltrating the gaming world and who knows just how realistic these games will be. You might be playing Call Of Duty and having to physically run to be able to move your character around the game. It seems like something that couldn’t happen anytime soon, but the way gaming has come over the last decade says different. Try to incorporate a bit more gaming where you can that involves getting up and doing some fitness.
Aim To Do 20 Minutes Of Exercise Per Day
Doing a certain amount of exercise per day, twenty minutes to be exact, can be enough for you to burn calories and lose weight. It also gets the heart pumping, which is what you want.
Try to push yourself to exercise daily because that will help you get yourself into more of a routine. By doing as little as twenty minutes, is going to make a difference, and that amount of time is pretty small in regards to the twenty-four hours you have to play within a day. So whether you’re doing a mini set of workouts that have been recommended to you by your personal trainer or you’re running up and down your stairs for twenty minutes, it will all make a difference.
Find A Sport You Love
Finding something you love is important, and it makes everything you do easier when you enjoy doing it. So when it comes to fitness, that same attitude should be taken. Think about the sports you enjoy doing or that you’ve always thought you would like and give them a go. Do something different and try something really new that you never thought to try. Once you’ve found those workouts, you will notice a shift in your motivation levels when it comes to exercising. Ask friends and family members for recommendations on what they do and see if it’s something you’ll like. It’s a case of trial and error for the most part.
Workout With Friends
And finally, when you’re working out, it can be handy to have someone there who’s doing the same and motivating you along the way. A personal trainer might not be something you can afford or find that works for you. So what about working out with a friend? There’s likely to be someone who wants to make a change to their diet or health by working out. Working out with a friend or family member can be motivating, and it means you can’t give up because you’d be letting that other person down. It means that whenever you have those days where you aren’t feeling inspired, they can help inspire you and vice versa. Ask around to see if anyone wants to get involved and then set up a routine or weekly get together to work out.
Incorporating more fitness into your life is important, so try some of these tips to see if they make a difference to how much fitness you can get into your daily routine. Whether that’s working out with friends, making the small effort to walk everywhere, or getting a personal trainer. The most important thing is the enjoyment and finding more of it in different exercises and fitness options.
