Published By: Puja Sinha

Too Tired to Be an Early Bird? Alternatives to Morning Walks

Feeling all bone-weary, nauseated, and sleepy in the morning, especially with hectic work schedules, should not compel you to give up on fitness.

Morning fatigue has its roots in poor or inadequate sleep, prolonged stress, and even certain chronic diseases and medical conditions. Often, it becomes difficult to stroll around after a late-night shift at work or toiling at home. Sometimes, morning walks get in the way of getting complete sleep and mess with your mind for the entire day. Under such circumstances, it becomes difficult to continue with scheduled walks. Alternatives to morning walks ensure optimum fitness and physical resilience with minimum space and equipment. You would be warmed up for a bit of cardio with these exercises without letting your fitness regimen meddle with sleep or work-life balance.

Pilates for Core Strengthening and Relaxation

Pilates, at the beginner level, focuses on core strength and breathing and incorporates structured exercises. If you are looking for activities that enhance mobility, body stretching, mindfulness, relaxation, and posture correction, nothing really beats Pilates. With Pilates, you relieve muscle tension and feelings of melancholy. It helps you excel at balance and coordination to improve productivity and job satisfaction. If your shoulder, neck, and back pain or injuries, or maybe stiffness, trust Pilates to work its magic wand on you.

Yoga for Holistic Well-being

Yoga has a mix of high and low-intensity styles for people of all age groups that play crucial roles in preserving tenacity, lowering stress hormones and secreting endorphins, improving sleep health, regulating BP levels, and relieving chronic pain.  Use a bit of warming up before trying the asanas, which should be a mix of forward, backwards, and side-bending poses. Yoga is an amazing way to rinse all the fatigue, anxiety, and stress, and inculcate a positive attitude towards your tasks.

Squash for an Aerobic Workout

A high-intensity racquet sport, squash is perfect if your job requires being tied to the desk. It promotes cardiovascular fitness, muscle endurance, weight loss, flexibility, hand-eye coordination and reflexes, and mental agility and cognitive prowess. Being a full-body workout, squash strengthens the wrist and back muscles. Since it requires two players, you would have ample opportunities for social interactions and healthy competition.

Indoor Walking for Perfect Resilience

Owing to increasing pollution levels, health experts are now in favour of indoor walking. Moderate-intensity indoor walking that promotes an optimum amount of workout sessions without straining the joints. While practising indoor walking, you may consider the following styles:

Power-walking

It implies taking faster steps; sort of jogging but with shorter strides.

Marching in Place

Walking in one place.

Stepping Sideways

Stepping side to side for some fun and variety.

Knee-lifts

Marching by lifting the knee without changing place.

Strength training could be infused with indoor walking before blowing off steam with a slow walk.

Swimming for Overall Fitness

A holistic approach towards wellness, swimming is therapy. It is a bull-body rehabilitation plan to ease the strain on the joints and muscles, enhance metabolism, tend to heart health, and burn calories. For those worried about a sedentary lifestyle with little time to invest in workouts, swimming is a game-changer. You can practice it whenever convenient and reap all the goodness it has to offer.

Gardening for Green Participation

Vigorous garden work such as hoovering, scrubbing, sweeping, and trimming requires some fitness and calorie burn, quite an effective alternative to go for jogging eerily early in the morning. Exposure to nature and sunlight is also much required if you are always cooped up inside your work cubicle. Besides freshening you, gardening helps you to mentally unwind and develop optimism for the day.