Did you know that you can burn a lot of calories doing house chores? According to fitness experts, house chores can burn up to an average of 250 calories in an hour for a 150-lb individual. This post has highlighted some of the ways you can use your house chores to build up a sweat and get fit while doing housework.
1. Turn a bend into a functional exercise
Every time you are doing a chore that requires bending, turn the motion into an exercise by modifying the way you move. For instance, when picking up something from the floor, you can do it with a lunge. Or, you can do a full squat when, say, you are lifting groceries or a laundry basket.
2. Doing Laundry
Doing the laundry is a sure way to give you a great work out. It takes a lot of physical work to keep your clothes clean; from lifting up heavy laundry baskets, to lifting your arms upwards and downwards when hanging the clothes outside. Instead of using a washing machine, you can hand-wash your clothes to burn more calories and stay fit. Obviously, washing clothes by hand involves more physical activity than simply using a washing machine.
Here are other ways you can exercise to stay fit instead of using mechanized equipment:
- Rake the leaves instead of using a blower
- A manual mower will give you greater exercise than using a gasoline mower
- Wash your car at home instead of taking it to a car wash
- Washing the dishes, rather than using the dishwasher, involves a lot of bending and reaching actions which are good exercises to do.
- Lay off blenders and choppers and use a mortar and pestle and a knife to do your food prep work.
3. Vacuuming
This is another house chore that can give you a great work out. In fact, it offers you the same level of physical activity as rowing or hiking. While at it, extend the stretches of your muscles by dusting even the hard-to-reach places. Again, consider doing the whole house in one go. This way, you are sure to work up quite a sweat.
Also, while vacuuming, add some lunges to tone up your buns and legs. You can begin at one end of the house and do lunges as you vacuum over to the other side of the house. However, do your best not to lean on the vacuum cleaner, but rather rely on it for balance only.
4. Do chores that use a lot of muscles regularly
Chores, like scrubbing a wall daily, sweeping, mopping, cleaning rugs, chores that involve climbing up and down stairs several times, ironing, and dusting (especially hard-to-reach places) are strenuous activities that put a lot of muscles to use. Doing such chores regularly is sure to keep you fit.
5. Consider making a playlist of upbeat music to help you set the pace while doing chores
Scientific studies confirm that listening to fast-paced music can encourage you to make quicker moves and maximize the results of your physical activities.
Use upbeat music when doing chores like vacuuming, mopping, cleaning windows, scrubbing the walls, and other such chores.
6. Other ways to get fit while doing housework
Doing tricep dips while, say, making your bed, or climbing up and down a ladder while painting, or decorating, or doing squats while loading the dishwasher, are examples of activities that you can throw in a few exercises while doing them and working around the house.
Big changes come from small beginnings so, even making the smallest change, or implementing one simple action, can help to make you fit, especially if you make it a habit every day. When you begin to build these habits, you can slowly increase the difficulty level and try working a bit harder, but remember; it all starts with building good habits.
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