The value of Micro workouts during your day

Good morning, everyone. It's Cherie here from SpiceFitness.com. So I just thought I'd come in today because many of us wait till that perfect moment or that moment when we've got enough time where we can do some fitness for ourselves, where we can get our body stronger and fitter and healthier.

But you know, that doesn't need to be. You don't need to wait till you've got an hour or three quarters of an hour or half an hour. You can have five minutes.

You can even have two minutes and it can all work to your advantage at the end of the day or the end of the week because your body will respond to whatever you do with it. So I love how bodies just continue to adapt and continue to get stronger, fitter, healthier with just some simple things that we can do. One is what we eat, but the other one which is really important is how we move and what we do with our body.

Particularly if you're in a sedentary job, sedentary meaning that you sit at a desk all day and don't move much, just adding a mini or micro workout every half an hour or every hour, you add a five-minute workout, guess what? At the end of the day, if you do three to five minutes at the end of your working day, well, you've done a whole half an hour workout. So fantastic.

And for many people, it becomes a stress having to think, how can I fit in going to the gym and how can I fit in time to get this body working well? So I'm just going to run through what a micro workout is. And at the end, I'm going to do an example for you.

It won't be on here for too long today. So micro workouts are fantastic thing because as I said before, it is just a mini workout. So you can put a few moves together, try and do upper body and lower body if you can, doing it at the same time, where you can actually get your heart rate going up at the same time as you get your body to move.

And at the end of that, you'll feel like you've done something. Hey, at the end of that, you may want to continue on. But for somebody, for example, that's working at home at the moment behind your desk, a bit hard to do in a workplace to just suddenly get yourself up from the desk and do a five-minute workout.

But if you're at home, there's no reason that you can't be doing this. So let's have a look at what it's about. So a micro workout or a mini workout, it just gives you a chance to do something rather than nothing at all.

Hi, Quinn, great that you could join me. A micro workout doesn't need to last for any particular period of time. It could be two minutes, could be five minutes, but probably a micro workout would be something around under five minutes or so.

So it allows a workout when you're stuck on time, and who knows how many times we get stuck on time. We've got a full on day. If you knew that it was just a few moves that you could squish into your hour, that's perfect.

And it's great to do from home because it means that you can get yourself up from your desk every hour. You see, they've done studies that have shown that if you sit at a desk all day for eight hours of the day, and then you suddenly on the way home from work, go to the gym, and you do an hour at the gym, then the thing is that you've been still sitting for eight hours of the day and not done hardly anything. So if you can be doing five minutes or so every hour, that is a huge thing, actually.

It's really huge and far better than if you'd sat and thought, I'll wait till I get to the gym at the end of the day. And even better if you do every hour five minutes and then go to the gym at the end of the day, that's even better again. But if you can't do that, then the five minutes will all add up.

And Fitness Australia have done studies to say, is it better doing fitness all in one big go or is it okay doing it in small amounts over the day? And you know, it all adds up to the same. So it doesn't matter if you do it in one big splurt or if you do it in small little sections throughout the day, it all adds up to the same amount at the end of the day.

And it's probably better for you because to sit for whole eight hours is not so good for that body. Hi, Susie, great that you could join me. And so, yeah, so you sat in a chair all day.

So this is somebody that's got a sedentary job. You might sit in the chair on the way to work. So you're in a car or on the bus if you don't cycle or walk.

So you're sitting in a chair, sit in the chair all day at work. You sit back, sit back in the chair on the way home from work. And then you probably get home and eat dinner and you sit in a chair again.

And that is like poison to your body. It's poison to your body because we're not designed to just sit in a chair all day. We're not designed to do that.

And your body will soon start to show results of that when you start to get that sore back and your body doesn't move like it once did. So maybe you did participate in a nice gym class on the way home and you plan to do that class three or four times per week, but the remainder of the day spent at the desk, not good. So how would you feel if you moved more throughout the day?

And that's what I'm talking about today. Mini workouts, micro workouts where you just take a few moves. I'll show you an example.

Then I'm going to stand back and I'll show you what I mean by doing that. Hi Suzanne, great that you could join me. And so yes, so many professions are very blessed in that way.

They move continuously throughout the day. So if you take plumbers, builders, kind of farm workers, food distribution handlers, removalists, they all move through the day. So they're fine.

They probably don't need to do this. And I'm talking about those of you who sit for a long time throughout the day and don't actually make your body move, how easy it can be to just add that. So I'm just about to show you.

So when we move, our muscles contract and what happens when our muscles contract? So Fitness Australia did a study as well with people that sat at a desk and they actually did ultrasounds of their whole body. And you know what, our muscles go to sleep if we don't move them.

So if our feet are at a desk, our circulation going through our legs and stuff is very slow, sluggish slow. The moment you actually stand up at a stand up desk, it actually gets really, it starts to pump because our body's got to hold ourselves up. So we don't just sit here and go to sleep.

When we're at a stand up desk, our blood is pumping through. So they've done ultrasounds on that as well and shown bright red right up through the legs and through other parts of the body as well. Hi Mia and Janet.

And so it's a cool thing. So even standing up for half a day at a stand up desk is equal to going on a one hour brisk walk. Now how's that for something?

So those of you who have a sedentary job, you're at a desk all day, actually have a think about standing at a stand up desk. But I'm going back to my micro workouts at the moment. So the moment our muscles contract, the circulation starts to increase.

If we're pre-diabetic or diabetic, it helps to get those sugars out of our bloodstream. It's really good. So sugars are passed out of the body and nutrients are moved into cell and there's changes in hormones as well.

So moving is a brilliant thing for your body straight away. And then people will say to you, well, how do I move? I don't know what to do.

I'm going to show you a very short example at the end here where I just do 10 reps of each thing. And it's just something I threw into my mind this morning, but the world you're oisey, you can put in there things that you would like to yourself. I'll be wrapping up in about five minutes.

So stay with me if you can. So the good thing about a short workout is most of us can find the time to do it. And we can feel proud of our success.

You can't tell me you can't find five minutes in the day. I'm sure you can. And you know what?

It just amazes me again and again, that people will find time to be sick. There's a quote there that says, if we get sick, we'll have to find time to be sick. We'll be in a bed.

We'll have to have treatment. So we surely can find the time, five minutes to prevent illness. And I think it's an essential, particularly when you get into your 50s, 60s, that's when quite a few of us succumb to different illnesses.

Why do that? And certain diseases, why do that if we to keep these micro workouts that I'm talking about in a regular routine? Well, if you're at a desk, you can put a timer on your desk that goes off every hour.

And every hour, you may just look at one thing. You may have a skipping rope and you may do skipping for five minutes. Awesome.

If you don't like to skip high knees, if you don't like to do high knees, pretend skip, step side to side, move it, move your body. It's an essential. And so having something, I had a 75-year-old client that did have a skipping rope in her carport.

So every time she went out to the car, she would see the skipping rope and she'd never skipped in her life, but she started to become a skipper. So every time she went out in her car, she'd do five minutes of skipping. How easy is that?

And she was 75 previously with osteoarthritis and couldn't move. So hello, she can do that. Any of us can do it.

So place a rope by your kitchen bench, maybe even, and every time you come to your kitchen bench, do 10 skips. That 10 skips is better than doing no skips at all. Whatever you decide to do with a micro workout, make sure that you do it on a frequent basis.

Hello, if you're not doing it for a day or two, who cares? But if you can make it frequently, that's great. So maybe you have a little thing even on the back of your toilet door to remind you, okay, you're in the toilet now, do a five-minute workout when you get out of here.

Honestly, there's so many ways we can do it. Choose an exercise if you can that work multiple muscle groups. So you want to, so you're going to get up your heart rate if you use legs.

So they are big muscles. So anything you can try and use legs and arms or arms and legs, trying to alternate between the two and don't make it just a, so if I did just a bicep curl and I'm just working my bicep or I'm working my tricep, I'm not going to get a great workout. I'm going to get a more toned bicep or tricep, but I'm not going to get my heart rate pumping and getting that blood flowing around.

So try and use big muscle groups. And some of those are squats and lunges, push-ups, pull-ups, mountain climbers, all sorts of stuff. And so you can use a band if you've got a band at home, if you've got a football at home, do a football.

If you didn't know what to do and you did want to only pay five Australian dollars a week, we also have an amazing online program where we do body weight. Some of it's with people, some with bands and some with a weight. But these are all easy and cheap stuff you can buy.

And that's under the spicefitness.com thing. You can get on there and join in that. You can pull out when you want to as well.

And there's no joining fee, $5 Australian a week, not too bad. And timing, you can make it a number of reps or simply time it. So what I'm doing today, I'm doing specific reps.

So I'm going to put on my workout I'm in at High Dawn, and I'm just going to be doing 10 reps of each. Why 10 reps? I just decided in my head 10's easy enough, and I'm just going to count them.

But otherwise, most of my workouts, I like to time it. So I'll put on a Tabata timer, and you can download Tabata timers, which go for 20 seconds on and 10 seconds off. I often like to do my workouts to that.

And you can download those off iTunes, so they're not hard to find as well. So if you want to time it, you just make it a specific time, like I said there, and just see how many reps you can do on that timer. Maybe do 8 lots of 20 seconds, and you've done a 5-minute workout.

Simple. But today, I'm going to do around about a 5-minute workout with just reps. Try and incorporate these mini workouts throughout your day, as I said before.

And now I'm going to end there, because I'm just going to show you a simple way. It's a shame I didn't have a groovy song I can put on, but I didn't. So you'll just have to hear my voice for a bit.

But I've just put together a really quick workout. I'm going to throw my chair away, and I'm going to show you how easy it is to get a mini workout done. And don't forget, if you did want to join in on an amazing program, you'll see me and my normal clients.

We work out together in 15 to 20-minute workout blocks, but I've also put mini workouts on my spicefitness.com workouts as well.

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That is as easy as a mini workout can be, and you can put whatever moves you want in there. That was just an example of showing you I'm done now for the next hour. I can get back to my desk, do my work, work away, come back in the next hour, and I'm off again doing something.

So try and incorporate upper body, lower body, and have fun doing it, and I'll see you next time. If you want to know anything more, put it down there. But spicefitness.com, if you want to get in there, I put a great mini workout last night. You can tell my heart rate's up. So my blood's pumping right now. It's so good.

I put one in there last night, so you can get in there and have a look on the Facebook page, spicefitness.com. Hi. Energize.

I feel great, Donna. Dina, sorry. I need my glasses on.

I feel great. Actually, you feel good for that. You just need to get up off the couch or off your chair, and you feel so good.

Your heart's going. You can feel like you've done some strengthening to your body, and you do feel good. So I'm about to turn 58 in about the next week and a half, week or so, and I'm feeling good for it.

And thanks, Katharina. I never know whether to call you Katharina or Dina, but yeah, so you do feel good. You feel fantastic.

So if you wanted to know more, ask, but otherwise, you can get in on the spicefitness.com Facebook page, and I have posted a five-minute one in there as well that I posted last night. So you have an awesome day. I'm going to go out on my bike now and have a bike ride because the sun's shining.

I went for a trek up in the snow up in the mountain a couple of days ago. We don't get much snow here, so when we do on the mountain, I can see the mountain out my lounge room door. It is a great place to be.

So whenever you do get a chance to move, do it because your body will thank you for it. You have a great day. I love you all.

Bye.