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A Guide to Exercise for Fitness-Phobes

Not everybody enjoys exercise, but if you don’t lead a particularly active life, being a fitness-phobe can start to take its toll on your health. If you’ve tried the gym and long runs just aren’t your thing, you might be feeling at a loss. To help you out and offer some ideas on what you can try next, we’ve put together a guide to exercise for fitness-phobes.

Dog Walking

If you own a dog, you might not realise that the walks you take two or three times a day are in fact benefitting your health. To increase the health benefits of your regular dog walks, pick up the pace a little and squeeze in your stomach muscles as you walk to help build strength in your core muscles. If you’re a dog-lover but don’t own one yourself, ask a friend if you can accompany them on their walks or offer to walk the dogs at a local animal shelter a few times a week.

Pilates or Yoga

If sweating it out at the gym really isn’t your thing, a less active option is to join a pilates or yoga class. Both focus on strength and flexibility, and yoga can even improve your mental wellbeing. According to the NHS, pilates and yoga can help with high blood pressure, lower back pain and heart disease, and when combined with cardio activities (like dog walking) they can assist weight loss. Admittedly yoga and pilates classes do come at a cost, but it’s usually only around £4 a time and the only upfront cost you might have is buying your own foam roller or yoga mat. If you fancy getting a head start, click here for a good online stockist.

Housework

Did you know that housework can actually help you burn 50,000 calories a year? It’s something that you do anyway, but making more of an effort to keep your house looking spic-and-span will increase the amount of exercise you do. Vacuuming and doing the laundry are the most effective calorie burning chores, but even dusting and polishing can burn over 2000 calories in a year. Dancing around the house whilst doing the chores will increase the amount of calories burnt, so put some music on and get cleaning.

Hopefully, even if you’re somebody who hates exercise, you’ll give one of our fitness-phobe exercise ideas a go now you’ve been given a little inspiration. Exercise doesn’t have to involve hitting the gym, and you might even already be burning calories without even knowing it.