This is now the third installment in my newly minted Apartment Fitness series! If I ever expect any of my patients to invest in their health on a continuous basis I intend to lead by example – these posts are my testament to that (at least where exercise is concerned!). Last time I told everyone about Active Recovery, today I will tell everyone about the beginnings of my general strength protocol!
At the moment my primary concern is to improve my general health characteristics and to express a level of strength that will allow me to enjoy an active lifestyle. With that idea in mind my general strength protocol will be progressive and centered around my ability to push and pull my body through space in challenging circumstances. Considering that this is the first workout that I am doing with regards to any form of strength work I kept the volume and intensity low (no need to burn out when I am currently looking to lay a base level of fitness to build on later!).
With all of that preamble out of the way I will now describe my workout! With the intention of using my apartment as my equipment I went in to the stairwell (this is where most of my workouts will probably occur!). I used each floor landing for sets of 5 pushups and I performed deep lunges 2 stairs at a time up each flight until I got to the top floor. I repeated the 5 pushups on each landing going back downstairs while doing reverse lunges down 2 stairs at a time. I traveled 10 floors up and down meaning I ended up doing 100 pushups in total – I didn’t bother counting the repetitions of lunges I did ( I have no intention of becoming neurotic about numbers – I just want to express generally increasing physical capacity not test myself against arbitrary numbers).
This workout did get my heart rate up slightly and the sets of 5 pushups were easily manageable – when I repeat this workout I will increase the number of pushups on each landing. All in all it was a very manageable workout. If anyone wants to try it and is not confident in their ability to do pushups, do wall pushups instead.
If I have one goal in writing these posts aside from sharing my journey it is to provide a view of physical activity as easily approachable regardless of physical ability! All I want people to take away from this is that we will all be healthier if we simply MOVE MORE!
