Television and Exercise: a Perfect Match

Television time can be doubled up as workout time.

While there is great value in using your time in front of the television to unwind- down time if you will- we often forego exercise for the easiness of kicking back on the couch. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive; you can still get a great workout while watching your favorite show. 

To demonstrate my point try this exercise while you are sitting reading this blog: 

• Sitting with good posture, squeeze your abs, hold 5 seconds, and release. Repeat a few times. 
• Again with good posture, squeeze your glutes, hold 5 seconds, and release. Repeat a few times. 

Just like that, you are on the road to toning your muscles, especially the external oblique muscles of the abdomen which are important for maintaining good posture while you sit and watch. 

Try incorporating an easy workout circuit into your Netflix habit.

Between episodes, try alternating between push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, lunges, squats, and wall sits. Challenge yourself to plank during the credits and in between shows. You will barely even notice the physical exertion before you sit down on the couch again, but trust me your body will be thankful! 

Undoing the damage of sitting.

You already sat all day at work and now you are going to put your body through another spree of sitting in the evening. Simply getting up and having a stretch or doing 20 jumping jacks breaks the monotony of sitting, gets your circulation flowing, and utilizes the functional muscle groups of the body so that they don’t tighten up excessively.