Creating a successful routine when you work from home should take care of all elements of your life. For example, creating a work-from-home exercise routine can boost your physical and mental health and give you more focus for working for extended periods at home.
Thankfully, we created some tips to help you produce a work-from-home exercise routine that meets your needs. These tips are great when planning to work from home exercise breaks and can teach you how to stay active when working from home in any situation.
How to Stay Active When Working From Home
It might seem impossible to fit regular exercise into your morning routine while working from home. However, getting up and moving your body is more than possible. For example, you can take 15-minute breaks for a short workout. Even getting up and walking down to the local store for a coffee keeps you active.
Work on your wellness while working from home with little things to do throughout your day that can help you stay active. A pair of weights at your desk gives you something to do while waiting for your computer to start in the morning or listening to people talk in a meeting. Take these little steps to make a big difference.
Body Parts to Train While Working From Home
While exercising every part of your body is vitally important, some parts need more attention than others. Your workout while working from home should try to improve your posture, as it’s not uncommon for office workers to slouch or have bad posture. Train the following parts to keep your body strong and minimize unnecessary strain:
- Neck: It isn’t uncommon for at-home workers to experience heavy neck strain due to poor posture.
- Abs: Keeping your abs strong can improve your posture and minimize strain on your body.
- Lower Back: The lower back is often the most heavily affected body for office workers.
- Shoulders and Wrists: You might feel pain working from home in these body parts.
These body parts are also crucial for anybody who works at a desk for a long time. For example, student-athletes that work on homework and attend classes may want to use these tips to keep their bodies strong. Improving your lower back, abs, and neck strength can minimize imbalance and pain and avoid potential injuries. It can also make working out more manageable if you increase your exercise frequency and intensity later.
15 Work-From-Home Exercise Routine Tips
The following tips can help you create a work-from-home exercise routine that fits into any lifestyle. You can adjust its intensity to suit you and your fitness. As importantly, you can use these ideas when creating working-from-home exercise breaks that fit into your office’s time management methods.
1. Do a Short Plank Before You Work
Planking is a powerful way to work your core muscles and can also help with your abs and lower back. Do a plank by getting on your hands and knees and lifting yourself parallel to the ground. Hold this pose for 30 seconds at first and move up to one minute and then two minutes. It might seem simple at first to do a plank. However, it requires actual strength and can be a significant challenge. But it gets your blood flowing, and your workout routine starts. Try to “slide” your elbows towards your toes to engage and strengthen your core muscles.
2. Schedule Other Workouts
Try to vary your workouts to engage different body parts every day. For example, select workouts for your abs one day, your wrists the next, and your back on another. You can also combine different exercise types into one day to create a comprehensive routine. Note that it is usually best to rest one part of the body the day after doing a workout on it to ensure that it gets time to rest and recover before the next routine.
3. Find Exercises You Can Do At Your Desk
NASA suggests several at-desk workouts that help their skilled employees stay in shape. For example, they suggest body lifts off a chair, deep squats while standing up, and much more. Even lifting your legs at your desk and walking in place can be a good way to get into shape. The key step here is to stay as active as possible while you work. Even a little movement while sitting at your desk can flow your blood more.
4. Buy an Under-the-Desk Workout Bike
Many vendors sell under-the-desk workout bikes you can use throughout your day to get into shape. These bikes fit comfortably under the desk and let you get some workouts while you sit. They’re powerful for your breaks, as you can put your feet up and get some exercise while eating, reading, or during a work meeting. It’s a great way to turn those otherwise static work periods into active and successful moments.
5. Don’t Ignore the Power of Walks
Walking might seem like a little exercise, but it can be particularly useful for at-home workers. For example, you can walk from one end of your house to the other several times or even go up and down a staircase to get some great exercise. However, it is often best to get outside and walk because you’ll get some fresh air, change your scenery, and get a bit more diversity. That fresh air can refresh your mind and help you focus more effectively at work. Note: you can coordinate your walks with your meetings to get great results.
6. Perform Neck and Shoulder Rolls
Neck and shoulder rolls are relatively simple exercises that require you to roll your arms and neck along their full range of motion. This step is an excellent option because it helps work these often strained muscles throughout the day. Pay attention to your posture as you sit during these exercises, and drop your shoulders when you notice yourself tensing up. It might seem awkward initially, but it can become second nature with enough work.
7. Consider a Posture-Improvement Device
Good posture helps remove strain from your core muscles, abs, and lower back and can also aid digestion, improve your mood, and boost blood flow. Please pay attention to your posture throughout the day and actively improve it when you notice yourself slouching. Just as importantly, consider adding a posture-supporting device to your chair to make it easier to sit up straight for long periods. Soon, you’ll do it naturally.
8. Sit on a Medicine Ball
Sitting on medicine or an inflatable exercise ball can be a surprisingly powerful way to improve your workout routine. Sitting on a ball forces you to keep your posture straight and requires actively adjusting your position to stay comfortable. You don’t need to sit on one constantly to get these benefits. Instead, you can swap your office seat with the ball to get the same results.
9. Run in Place
While it might feel silly initially, running in place can be a useful way to get into shape at your at-home office. Set a short timer during one of your breaks, and run in place as quickly as you feel comfortable. You can add leg and arm weights to increase the resistance and improve your burned calories. Walk in place rather than run if you aren’t quite ready to jump to that next level just yet.
10. Integrate Some Yoga Poses
Yoga isn’t some flaky “new age” exercise but a powerful way to improve overall health. It is a great exercise routine for office work and can help with back pain and tensed muscles. Yoga can also improve your back, core, and ab strength and increase shoulder, wrist, and arm muscle density. There are much yoga poses to consider, including the cat-cow pose for your back and the sun salutation for the whole body. Even five minutes of yoga at the beginning of the day can help you here.
11. Pay Attention to Your Face
Working from home may keep you away from your co-workers and minimize your talking time. This may affect your facial health by minimizing how often you work those muscles. As a result, you can do cheek workouts (smiling widely and pushing up the smile), tighten your jowls (swallowing while smiling), work your forehead (frown very deeply), and tighten your lips (pucker up for 10 seconds repeatedly throughout the day).
12. Stretch Your Wrists
Without regular workouts, your wrists may suffer from needless pain while typing throughout the day. You can avoid this problem by stretching your wrists or using various wrist workouts. Hold your hand straight and rotate your wrist along its full range of motion. Move it forward, backward, and to the sides to help work the joint. Also, take breaks from typing periodically to avoid straining these muscles and joints.
13. Work Your Fingers
Like your wrists, your fingers might need a little rest throughout your day to avoid serious strain. A few exercises can also help increase their strength and prevent finger problems. For example, you can stretch your fingers through their range of motion, tighten them up at the joints, and even squeeze exercise balls to increase your hand strength. Choose a few options and do them throughout the day.
14. Keep an Exercise Log
An exercise log or other activity tools are a great way to keep track of your workouts and ensure that you stay on task. Log what activity you did each day, note how long you performed it, and give yourself a rating on how comfortable you felt performing it. Update your log after every workout and compile your weekly data every Friday afternoon. Doing so can help you keep track of what you’re doing and adjust your routine as you see fit.
15. Setup Workouts With Your Team
If you regularly meet with your team via Zoom or Slack (which you should do as often as possible), you can set up various workouts with your team throughout the day. Group exercise helps motivate you to stay in shape and build team morale. Pick various times to do these exercises throughout the week and have different members lead each day. Doing so helps everyone take control of this workout.
Conclusion
As you can see, these work-from-home exercise routine tips can give you working-from-home exercise breaks and teach you how to exercise while working from home. When considering these methods, try to make sure they match any time management method you use for your day.
For example, you may find these steps work well when using the Pomodoro Technique of working for 25 minutes and taking a five-minute break. Fit a few simple exercises into one five-minute break and then relax the next. This way, you can get a surprising amount of fitness into your day.
