Do you habitually plunk yourself down at your desk for hours on end, wrapping up tasks without regular breaks? If so, you risk shortening your life dramatically. But 9 fast free exercise bursts, well timed, can create a life-giving surge of health! Check out these “Movement Moments” as free exercise tips.
Time management tips can shorten your life if productivity is your sole concern. How often do you deny yourself breaks to remain at the desk or computer terminal for hours on end? Any prolonged sedentary activity works against you and can actually shorten your life.
Recent evidence suggests that the body is poorly suited for prolonged periods of sitting. The American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation, has published a report that every additional hour spent watching television daily without rising from the couch increases the risk of mortality from heart disease by 18%! If you sit without moving for four hours running on a daily basis, your susceptibility to death from cardiovascular disease increases by 80%, compared to those who remain seated for two hours straight or less.
This study, notably, used a control group that met exercise guidelines. And one’s diet did not alter these results.
How can this be? Well, studies trace strong links between overall sedentary time with increased blood lipids, blood glucose, and fat tissue, even in people who performed moderate to vigorous exercise several times each week.
Fortunately, you can maintain your effectiveness and safeguard your health, as well. To reduce this particular set of risk factors, you needn’t set aside hours to exercise. All you need is “Movement Moments” – a minute here and there, to break up periods of sitting. Something this simple helps convert the cholesterol in your blood from LDL (the bad cholesterol) into HDL (the healthy kind).
In fact, frequent short breaks spent moving around, stretching and flexing your muscles also contributes to lower body mass index, a smaller waist circumference, better glucose metabolism and lower blood lipid levels. And it’s completely free!x`
Movement Moments Are a Time-Wise Solution
Every 45 minutes or so, try creating brief Movement Moments for yourself. Use a timer if that helps jog your memory. At 45-minute intervals stop what you are doing, get up, and move in whatever way feels good to you. (Do this in privacy, if you can, so that you don’t feel constrained.) Try these, and add your favorites:
Nine Fast And Free Exercise Bursts
- Lift weights, large or small
- Ascend and descend stairways.
- Dance
- Jumping jacks
- Leg lunges
- Doing sit ups or leg-lifts
- Stretching
- Shaking tension from your arms and legs
- Whatever feels right at the moment!
Do the movements you choose vigorously for about a minute; then you can return to work refreshed. It hardly interrupts your flow, and your energy flows more freely.
