Faustino
Active Member
- Location
- La Sierra de Grazalema
So I’m mid-40s and quite frankly not at all inclined towards going to the little gym in the next town where I live as I have too many better things to do with my time and energy…but I am aware of the importance of strength and resistance training for my general well-being. With this in mind I started having little movement breaks throughout the day to keep mobile and strong. It’s incredible how a few minutes here and there can have a drastic effect on posture, mobility and strength-endurance without eating into your day, time-wise. Basically, I try to get up from my computer every hour for a few minutes of some type of movement, whether that be a yoga Sun Salutation or some Foundation Training isometric postures (singularly the best thing I’ve found for back health in the health and fitness world) or some kettlebell swings etc.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOTvaRaDjI
Actually, from the minute I get up in the morning and wait for the coffee to boil I find there’s often a few minutes that I can get for a wee bit of mini-training that adds up over the course of weeks and months towards helping my physical and mental well-being and I thought I would share some of the ways I get good quality work in without sacrificing any time whatsoever.
First is a founder from Foundation Training to help fight against all that sitting most of us do throughout most days. I’ll also add a few other standing Foundation Training moves while I’m getting the coffee ready. One of my first (not very agreeable perhaps, but it has to be done) tasks of the day is to go out into the garden and pick up after my ten dogs. Yep, 10!! So I have a fair bit of picking up to do lol but I actually use this time to get some loaded carries in. Basically I pick up a couple of heavy kettlebells and walk around the grounds until the job’s completed, usually about 10 minutes. That’s already a workout in itself, using a tremendous amount of musculature if the ‘bells are, say, 32 kgs each.
Some of my favourite exercises to litter throughout the day are: all types of chin-ups on gymnastic rings (enabling neutral grip i.e. palms facing each other which helps any tendonitis issues a lot of former gym-rats might have), different types of press-ups (right now I’m perfecting the 1 arm 1 leg variety) and dips on the rings and some mini-sequences of yoga, mobility routines such as Joe De Franco’s Limber 11 and pilates. A couple of times a week I’ll try to hit a target number of reps with a heavy ‘bell in the clean and jerk or perhaps a certain number of burpees. Again, though, these are done in a few minutes or less (today I did 50 reps with the 28 kg kettlebell in about 3 or 4 minutes followed by 30 burpees in just over a minute and that’s probably the closest thing to a training session I do). Clubbells are another tool that can come in handy for improving mobility so I have a 4 kg one that I try to play with often and also resistance bands offer the chance for a nice little mini-circuit of exercises, too. Climbing a rope out in the garden a couple of times is another nice way to break up a shift at the computer or simply doing a Lizard Crawl round the house.
What I like about this way of training is I never get fatigued or injured and it doesn’t eat up any time I could be dedicating to my newest passion, cycling. In fact, some of the Foundation Training moves can even be carried out whilst on the bike so there’ always an opportunity to be strengthening the posterior chain to make yourself stronger and more robust. Also, there’s no psychological stress of getting motivated for a training session because such sessions don’t exist and I know in my own case this was often a fatiguing part of training in itself. All in all, I think a lot of people could benefit from this type of moving rather than the structured gym visits and there’s no real need to buy any equipment at all (it just so happens that I have this stuff lying around anyway but a floor and some sort of ledge for chins would be more than enough to get started).
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BOTvaRaDjI
Actually, from the minute I get up in the morning and wait for the coffee to boil I find there’s often a few minutes that I can get for a wee bit of mini-training that adds up over the course of weeks and months towards helping my physical and mental well-being and I thought I would share some of the ways I get good quality work in without sacrificing any time whatsoever.
First is a founder from Foundation Training to help fight against all that sitting most of us do throughout most days. I’ll also add a few other standing Foundation Training moves while I’m getting the coffee ready. One of my first (not very agreeable perhaps, but it has to be done) tasks of the day is to go out into the garden and pick up after my ten dogs. Yep, 10!! So I have a fair bit of picking up to do lol but I actually use this time to get some loaded carries in. Basically I pick up a couple of heavy kettlebells and walk around the grounds until the job’s completed, usually about 10 minutes. That’s already a workout in itself, using a tremendous amount of musculature if the ‘bells are, say, 32 kgs each.
Some of my favourite exercises to litter throughout the day are: all types of chin-ups on gymnastic rings (enabling neutral grip i.e. palms facing each other which helps any tendonitis issues a lot of former gym-rats might have), different types of press-ups (right now I’m perfecting the 1 arm 1 leg variety) and dips on the rings and some mini-sequences of yoga, mobility routines such as Joe De Franco’s Limber 11 and pilates. A couple of times a week I’ll try to hit a target number of reps with a heavy ‘bell in the clean and jerk or perhaps a certain number of burpees. Again, though, these are done in a few minutes or less (today I did 50 reps with the 28 kg kettlebell in about 3 or 4 minutes followed by 30 burpees in just over a minute and that’s probably the closest thing to a training session I do). Clubbells are another tool that can come in handy for improving mobility so I have a 4 kg one that I try to play with often and also resistance bands offer the chance for a nice little mini-circuit of exercises, too. Climbing a rope out in the garden a couple of times is another nice way to break up a shift at the computer or simply doing a Lizard Crawl round the house.
What I like about this way of training is I never get fatigued or injured and it doesn’t eat up any time I could be dedicating to my newest passion, cycling. In fact, some of the Foundation Training moves can even be carried out whilst on the bike so there’ always an opportunity to be strengthening the posterior chain to make yourself stronger and more robust. Also, there’s no psychological stress of getting motivated for a training session because such sessions don’t exist and I know in my own case this was often a fatiguing part of training in itself. All in all, I think a lot of people could benefit from this type of moving rather than the structured gym visits and there’s no real need to buy any equipment at all (it just so happens that I have this stuff lying around anyway but a floor and some sort of ledge for chins would be more than enough to get started).
