What are five simple exercises to do at home?

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For years I wasn’t doing anything much. I was naturally thin most of my life, until my mid-40s I suppose. Then COVID hit right at the time I probably should have been really working on keeping healthy. Perimenopause + staying home => not a good combination. Especially with our health history of heart issues in the family.

These days I walk 8,000 steps a day at least, lift weights 3x a week, and do sprints (run-walk) once a week. Every once in a while I get on the rowing machine (hubby’s favorite, along with basketball), but sitting there seriously bores me so I last ~15 minutes, doing sprints (30 seconds high intensity, 2-3 minutes recovery; rinse and repeat) so it’s not that bad. 

Steps can easily be done at home, I’ve been doing that since ~2016, even during the winter. I inherited the practice from my mom: when she was working at the hospital she walked everywhere, so when she retired she started walking IN THE HOUSE. This is my default if it’s too hot or cold outside. I vary things a bit by going up and down the stairs too. But hubby’s and my favorite is early in the morning, ideally with the sunrise (good for melatonin production and cortisol regulation), around our neighborhood.

Body weight exercises are super-easy and can be done any time of day. Squats (and modifications, e.g., goblet squat which you can do with a dumbbell, or jump squats esp. good for bone density), planks, glute bridges, lunges (not doing much of these right now because of a knee injury that’s mostly healed but it’s taken ~4 months of Hinge Health exercises), bird-dog, dead bug. 

Strength training is quite simple. If starting out you can use canned goods. There are weights you can strap on your wrists and/or ankles. I’ve worked my way up from 5 lb dumbbells to 15 lbs in… 2 years? Yeah, I’ve taken things really slow. That’s through several minor injuries (hand, elbow, wrist, etc.) too. We have a pull up bar bought by my son. The first time I used it ~6-7 years ago, I tried to pull myself up (decades after my last pull up on a monkey bar at the school playground) and injured my wrists and had to go to physical therapy for several weeks.

Plyometrics don’t require a lot of equipment either. I’ve mentioned jump squats (or squat jumps), and then there’s lateral jumps, good ol’ jumping jacks, jump rope (I’m not good at this at all, so frustrating), and box jumps (which can be done with a stair step, and then move up to a box eventually).

Flexibility and mobility exercises are essential for aging folks like me and hubby. Hinge Health has many. I’m doing some for mild carpal tunnel today, and for my neck, because I slept funny.

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I’ve been meaning to write about Hinge Health, so today’s WordPress prompt (this is my first one) is just perfect. For the record, this is not a paid post.

I’ve injured myself quite a bit the last several years. Fallen down the stairs twice (first time, hurt my elbow, second, hurt my butt — I had a giant bruise), thankfully no broken bones. Hopefully won’t happen again. Injured my hand/wrist/elbow late 2023 right around the time we were prepping for son’s wedding rehearsal which I had volunteered to cater LOL. My guys pitched in.  It went well.

I’m a great believer in physical therapy. I’ve gone to PT for several things. I’ll go again if I have to.

My last hand injury though, my PT gave me a custom-made finger splint( to immobilize my middle finger), gave me exercises to do, and basically told me that I needed to modify how I do things, i.e., wrap fabric around the handles of my knives and pots and pans, use the food processor more than my hand for chopping and slicing. I cook everyday, several times a day. That wasn’t going to work for me. I gave it a try for a few weeks. She suggested a steroid shot, which I got. It helped, for a bit. And then I gave up on the splint, and found a therapist on Hinge Health instead.

Not going to bore you with further details but basically Hinge Health’s philosophy is MOVEMENT IS MEDICINE.

My finger is back to normal now (it took about 3 months of Hinge exercises). But not only that, since then, I’ve used Hinge for several issues — my recent knee injury, tennis elbow, pelvic floor issues, lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, etc., etc. You tell your virtual PT (a real person, BTW) what ails you, and they come up with a playlist of exercises for you to do. You get free equipment too — resistance bands, a yoga mat, a phone stand, and even an Enso device if you need it.

I tell my PT how my exercises are going, if they’re too easy or too difficult, and she adjusts them for me. They also have quite the library of other exercises for the rest of your body, and articles about health including menopausal health, bone density, mobility. They tell you what happens as you progress through therapy, how to handle pain, setbacks. I’ve told just about everyone I know about them, that’s how much of a believer I am. If something’s hurting, but not to the point of needing surgery, GO GET HINGE.