During the pandemic that started in 2020 it became clear to all of us how fragile our physical, and mental, health actually is. Healthy, fit people suddenly turned very sick and people that never felt depressed found themselves experiencing mental health issues. While we realized the need to exercise, the gyms closed down due to the pandemic and the need for social distancing isolated people to their homes.
The importance of taking care of our physical and mental health has never been as important as during the pandemic. Organizations focusing on mental health issues and especially addictions and abuse have reported dramatic increases in people in need of help. A recent article by SaGameCare in Saudi Arabia describes an alarming increase in gambling addiction in a country with very strict laws against gambling.
Foreign workers and locals alike, have turned to the internet to cope with the stress of the pandemic and it’s easy to fall into bad habits. By offering educational videos explaining the early signs of addictive behavior and advice on how daily exercises help fight anxiety and depression they try to stop bad habits from becoming long-term negative behavior.
Physical exercise is essential for our overall health, yet not all of us want to go out to a gym in order to stay in shape. Gyms can be costly, they require you to travel for each and every workout, and let’s face it – many of us end up paying for a subscription that we don’t actually use. For that reason, it is beneficial to know about certain exercises you can do to stay in shape at home, and even better – without even leaving your home!
The good news is that there are actually quite a few different exercises that you can do, and each of these targets a different area of your body to help strengthen and develop. Of course, since you will be doing all of these exercises from the comfort of your own room, you can do them as frequently or as infrequently as you like without paying for the privilege.
Push-ups
This exercise uses your own body weight in order to push your upper body up from the ground, and this is what trains the chest, shoulders, and even the triceps. If you are just starting out with this exercise, you will need to have your legs extended outwards, support your upper body with your arms, and then gradually lower your torso towards the ground before pushing yourself back up.
This movement would count as one push-up, and of course, you will gradually start to fatigue with the more movements that you do. This is what will strengthen your upper body area, but if you find that this is a bit too difficult, you could change the exercise somewhat. Rather than have your legs outstretched, you could rest on your knees and simply perform a push-up in this way.
Either way, it is a guarantee that you will gradually start to increase your physical strength in the upper body region. Whether you want to start with just 20 push-ups a day or go slightly more extreme with 50-100, it is completely up to you.
Sit-ups
As important as you might think it is to keep your upper body strong and toned, your core is actually one of the most critical areas of the body. Whenever you hear that something requires ‘core strength’, this simply means that you need to have strong abdominal muscles in order to perform the task. And on the subject of strong abdominal muscles, there is no better exercise than sit-ups. If you’ve never done a sit-up before, don’t worry, for this exercise can be learned by anyone in a matter of minutes.
Basically, you need to sit on the floor with your legs slightly bent, and then pull your upper body up towards the knees from almost a flat position. By contracting and relaxing your abdominal muscles in this movement, you will gradually start to strengthen your core. On another note, if you have relatively little body fat, you might just notice that a six-pack starts to appear too!
Burpees
This is one of the classic gym movements that you can perform, although it is a little more complex than just the standard push-up or sit-up. When you are doing a burpee, you are starting from a standing position, and then bending down before setting yourself up in a push-up position. This needs to be done quickly! From the push-up position, you then need to pull your legs back in and jump up in the air to finish the movement. This is then classed as one burpee.
As you start to improve your fitness, you can start to increase the speed at which you perform this movement. You can also add in a push-up if you really want to, and that way you are having a bit of a full-body workout.
Conclusion
All of the physical exercises we’ve talked about in this post can be done in the comfort of your own home, or your own room if you prefer. If you want to really target all areas of your physical fitness and muscle composition, we would advise that you perform a blend of these exercises several times a week. Of course, this should be done while balancing your diet too for the best overall results.