If you’ve been following my vlogs for a while, you may remember that my lower back starter hurting last summer. I’d just started running three times a week a few months before, and apparently my back didn’t agree with that. I went to a physiotherapist who told me one of my inter-vertebral discs was irritated and I needed to take it easy for a few weeks. And that was the end of my running experiment. It took me a bit longer than expected to heal (I may have pushed myself more than I should have with my dancing), and every now and then I can still feel it, so I haven’t gone back to running and instead turned to more low-impact activities to stay fit.
Since I don’t really like working out (never have), I like to sneak exercise into my daily life. Luckily, low-impact activities are perfect for that. Today I’d like to share some of my favourite low-impact workouts with you.
Walking/hiking
Perhaps the easiest and most obvious low-impact workout is going for a nice, long walk. As I live in the Netherlands, it’s very easy for me to reach any destination by foot or bike (I’ll get to that later). I try to take a nice half-hour walk in the park regularly, but even a good two-hour shopping session around town counts.
Every now and then, I like to take a good 10+ km hike in nature with my boyfriend. Don’t underestimate the power of walking! Just the fact that it’s slow, doesn’t mean it’s not an effective workout.
Cycling
Tying in with the walking, cycling is a great leg and cardio workout and very easy to incorporate into daily life. In the Netherlands a car journey can often be replaced by a bike ride. Since I lost my right to free public transport (you get that as a student over here), I’ve been using my bike for all my daily trips. It can get me anywhere around town, relatively quickly. If you amp up your speed to go a little bit faster than your leisurely tempo, a means of transport can easily become an impromptu workout.
Once a week I cycle back and forth from my parents’ house to my boyfriend’s, which is a 20km ride in total. That gets your heart rate up, trust me!
Using the stairs
Another simple way to get moving in day to day life, is to take the stairs regularly. I live on the first floor of my building, and there is no elevator so luckily I’m not tempted. No choice but to take the stairs several times each day! But even when I do have the option to take the elevator, if my destination isn’t too high up, I’ll take the stairs anyway. Walking up (and down) stairs is again a great leg and cardio workout.
Yoga
Last week I did yoga for the first time. I want to start doing it at least once every week, to train some other muscles than just my legs! It’s a nice and calm “workout” with a little spirituality thrown in there, which is much more to my liking than hyped-up gym action. Yoga works my muscles a lot more than I was expecting, and it also helps with flexibility which I can definitely use as well.
Pilates
When I do crave a bit more action, I’ll go for a nice YouTube pilates class (I love Caseys videos!). Pilates consists of mostly floor exercises that work all the muscles of your body or focus on specific areas of the body. I find pilates very enjoyable and it gets my heart racing like crazy!
Swimming
Swimming is perhaps the best low-impact (or actually no impact) exercise you can do. It trains all the muscles and has other benefits as well, like training the lungs, while completely relieving the joints.
I haven’t swum in a long time for financial and practical reasons (my nearest swimming pool is very expensive, and going there would cost a lot of time as well), but I’m considering taking it up when the swimming pool goes public for summer. In winter they only allow people with expensive memberships in, but in summer they open up to allow families and recreational swimmers so I might check it out then and go for a little workout. I did want to include it in this list though, since it’s so beneficial!
Do you enjoy any low-impact workouts that I didn’t mention? Please share! :)
Have you ever heard of Walk to Rivendell? It’s a wonderful exercise motivator for LOTR lovers! All you have to do is keep track of your miles (walk, run, swim, etc), and you can make the journey from Bag End to Rivendell along with the hobbits or one of the many other journeys made in the LOTR series. Every few miles you can put in how far you are and it will tell you what was happening in LOTR at that time. I think you would love it!! http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/Walk/walk.html
Oh my gosh!!! I LOVE that!!! Just, aah! Thank you so much for letting me know about that! :D Awesome
Yay, I’m glad you like it! I just recently remembered it and I think I will go for the challenge again. It takes forever to finish, but that’s a good thing! :)
You’ll laugh but a few months ago I bought a thing called the “pedaler”–basically the pedals without the bike. It’s not exactly strenuous nor does it raise the heart rate as a brisk walk would do, but it’s great for someone who has to sit at a desk or do other sedentary work for long periods of time. Where I live it’s not too bike friendly and I totally miss it. I do love ballet based toning exercises like Mary Helen Bowen’s workouts and Callanetics (not sure if you’d have heard of it as it was popular decades ago but still has a surprisingly large “underground” following and they do have newer made vids). I much prefer the results to what one gets from Pilates and other popular exercises, which are very effective but square off the silhouette: I like to keep and accentuate the nipped in waist, haha. Other than that it’s yoga (I also like Kundalini) and bellydance and dance based aerobics like those of Hemalayaa.
That sounds awesome, I could use one of those! We tend to sit down for way too long nowadays…
I have problems with my lower back and legs so I have to do mostly low impact exerexercises. I love everything you mentioned, but swimming is definitely my favorite.
Hello Lucy. I live in Texas (in my 30’s) where cars is the main source of transportation. For exercise, I walk in my neighborhood, go to State Parks and hike, and my new favorite thing to do is water aerobics! I don’t know if this is true in the Netherlands but water aerobics usually has a high amount of elderly participation due to the water being easy on their joints, backs, etc. However, the elderly ladies in my classes are so friendly and the instructor offers advanced exercise moves for anyone that wants to step it up.
High intensity workouts are very popular here but I totally can’t keep up and I don’t want my work outs to feel like that. Have a great day :)
Natalie