Working From Home and Your Health

Working from home often requires you to be sitting in front of your computer for extended periods. This is known to have serious, potential negative impact on your health.

One way to avoid these dangerous side effects of sitting in front of your computer is to engage in frequent physical activities.

Micro-workouts

Micro-workouts are any workout routine that lasts from one to five minutes. The Japanese have a word for this: kaizen.

While kaizen means improvement in Japanese, the word has since been incorporated into a philosophy where small changes, repeated on a daily basis, will lead to large results.

Micro-workouts perfectly fits the kaizen approach. Most people give up on any exercise because they don’t think they can last through a long workout.

Micro-workouts change this thinking because anyone can exercise for a few minutes sometime during the 24 hour day.

Will you see results?

Probably not right away, but give it time. The point of repetitive daily micro-workouts is to get your body into motion, and to get you into the habit of exercising every day.

The positive habits are something you can use once you are ready to get into heavier training routines.

You do not have to limit yourself to one micro-workout a day. Because you can exercise for such a short period of time, you can easily fit a few training exercises into your day.

Frequent work breaks just to exercise will help keep your metabolism levels high throughout the day, and offset the negative effects of sitting in front of your computer for extended periods.

Plus, any activity is better than no activity.

Once you are firmly in the habit of micro-workouts, you might think about carrying the concept one step further: incorporate micro-workouts into your daily routine.

Here you insert micro-workouts during your regular activities. While standing in front of the sink getting ready for work do deep knee bends.

Or open the cupboard and do calf raises. Do curls while carrying bags.

Different Workouts

The list of micro-workouts is endless, and depends upon what part of your body you are looking to improve.

For those who say they have no time to exercise, micro-workouts are just the ticket they need to success.

You can’t say you have no time to exercise if you are exercising while going about your normal daily routines.

Build up Your Strength

Constant movement is something humans have always used as a means to build up their strength.

Long periods of inactivity can lead to all kinds of problems in the body. Humans have evolved to train slowly to reach a large goal.

Are micro-workouts as effective as longer workouts? This really depends upon you, your goals and the way you approach these workouts. If you want to lose weight, it doesn’t matter how you exercise – a calorie burned is a calorie burned.

If you are working on building and toning your muscles, you should expect plenty of pain when you begin your training.

Sore Muscles

Micro-workouts allow you to work slowly through the sore muscle stage until you no longer feel such a pull on those once unused muscles.

Understanding the concept of kaizen and using the micro-workout method is the key to the most successful and effective training: training you can incorporate right into your regular daily routine.