Top 10 Creative Home Fitness Tips

These are our top 10 tips for creative home fitness. Using your daily life, fitness is easy to fit into the routine, if you think creatively.

Doing laundry? Use this chore to help work on your arms. Back and neck tight? Put dishes away, using the motion to stretch out the tightness in your neck and upper back.

Modify these 10 creative home fitness tips to hone your body, and promote mental and physical well-being.

Top 10 Creative Tips for Staying Fit at Home

Keeping a routine helps with our mental health, and good mental health supports good physical health. But keeping a fitness routine at home requires a bit of creativity. Here are our top 10 creative fitness tips for keeping the momentum going. To track your daily fitness, these tools may help.

Creative Home Fitness Tips – Everyday Chores

Every little bit of movement counts. When you grab your laundry and transfer it from the washer to the dryer, take a handful of damp clothes and swing them up to the right and up to the left for a count of 10. Continue to do this until your washer is empty.

Make folding your laundry a game! As you shake out your laundry sing a little song and shake as hard as you can. I sing two verses of “Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. Shake the towels (or sheets, or tops, or whatever you're folding) and shake out the laundry and then fold. I shake up to the right, up to the left, and then in front.

Putting dishes away. Whether you've hand-washed or used the dishwasher, the dishes need to be put away! As I am vertically challenged, I use this as my stretching exercise. I stretch way up, and put the dishes away.

Channel your inner Tom Cruise, and do some dancing around the house to your favorite tunes as you mop, sweep, or vacuum. Fun, gets the heart pumping, and hey, who doesn't have a secret dance desire?

Creative Home Fitness Tips For the Whole Family

Watching TV with the family? During commercial breaks have a family challenge to see how many squats, or pushups or situps you can do.

Grab a partner and do some weight training. Grab a weighted fitness ball, or if you don't have one of those laying around, grab a few cans of food from the pantry. Go outside in the yard and toss back and forth for 10-15 minutes.

Does your house have stairs? Then you don't need a stair climber! Going up and down the stairs is one of the best exercises for cardiovascular health. To add a bit of weight, carry your laundry basket up and down the stairs. You need to put the laundry away, and this is a fantastic way to incorporate a chore into your exercise routine.

If you are able to get outside, then walk for 15-30 minutes. The fresh air will clear your lungs as you walk. Practice social distancing, and carry your hand sanitizer with you.

Stretch! I do these stretches every day to keep me limber.
- The first one is easy, stand in a doorway, grasping each side of the door (as if you were walking into the room). Take a large step forward, stretching your arms behind you, and pinching your shoulder blades together. Do this 10 times. This stretch is great for relieving shoulder tension, back, and neck tension.
- The second exercise is “Cat Cow”. Kneel on the floor with a mat (or a folded beach towel, unless you are going to do this on carpet). With knees and hands on the floor, stretch your back up to the sky like a cat, and hold for 10-15 seconds. Then let your belly sink down, like a cow's belly. Walk your hands forward as far as you can, stretching out your back and hold for 10 seconds.

Breathe! Deep breathing will help you relax, and release tension.

Create the 10-10-10 Challenge for the whole family. Start with 10 situps, 10 pushups, and finish with 10 leg lifts. This is Jim's favorite family challenge. I have lost every time, but I am getting better!