Two simple exercises you can do inside.
Though canceled classes and getting to watch movies and hang out with friends sounds like a perfect unexpected break from winter classes, the feelings of cabin fever can start to take over after only a few short days.
Working out is sometimes the first activity to leave the priority list, especially when the weather is too icy to get to the gym; however, by finding a little time to stay active, even at home in apartments or dorms, students will help their health dramatically and fight feelings of being trapped inside.
Gina Garcia, the assistant director of fitness at SMU, recommends students do anything they can to stay active, including several easy workouts that can be done in an apartment or even a dorm room.
Garcia says that students do not need workout equipment at all to do simple but effective workouts.
She recommends that students keep a resistor band around the house, if anything, because it is small and can be used to make any part of a workout more difficult.
“No other equipment is needed because if you were to buy free weights, it becomes more complicated because it will require you to have different weights to work different muscles,” Garcia said.
With or without a resistor band, students can do all of the moves recommended by the SMU personal trainers.
“It’s great to begin with the big groups of muscles, which is your glutes, hamstrings, and quad[riceps]…just basic jumping jacks will get the heart rate up,” Garcia said, which is a good way to start the workout.
Next, Garcia says students should get the legs working by doing three sets of 30 lower body squats with short breaks in between.
For the more advanced, Garcia recommends doing three sets of a minute of squats with 30 seconds of rest.
After starting with squats, to work the glutes and hip flexors, she recommends doing both forward and backward lunges. Students can do three sets of 30 with the lunges also.
“Plié squats and side lunges will take care of working the inner thigh area and…give[s] a different variety for legs,” Garcia said.
She also recommends doing a jumping lunge, or burpees, which will help raise the heart rate and “deliver more blood to working muscles,” Garcia said, and in turn give students a better workout.
To work the arms, chest, and back, students “can do narrow push-ups, which will develop the triceps, shoulder width push-ups, and the last one is a wide push up, which really targets the chest muscles as well as dips,” Garcia said.
Barr recommends doing three sets of tricep dips, using a chair, table or bench for support.
Students can modify these to their own fitness level, but Marilynn or “Birdie” Barr, Ph.D, lecturer in the department of applied physiology and wellness at SMU, recommends students do three sets of as many push-ups as they can with 30 second rests in between.
When trying to work the abdominal muscles, one of the main areas that students are worried about, Garcia recommends doing a plank or bridge for a minute, in sets of three with 30 seconds rest in between.
Additionally, students should do sets of “basic crunches on the floor…trying to elevate the upper body to meet your legs versus pulling the neck,” Garcia said, and “side and bicycle crunches will take care of the obliques.”
Again, Barr recommends that students do three sets of crunches with 30 seconds of rest in between.
To make any of these workouts harder, Garcia explains that by tying the resistor band to a chair, desk, or putting it in the door, students can add as much resistance to any routine, squats, abdominals, back…and “[they] don’t have to have anything but [the band].”
By doing these workout routines, Garcia explains that students can get an awesome workout in their own home without any machines or equipment.
Barr comments that students can get a “great workout…[with] no Bowflex or elliptical [machine] needed!”
When the weather permits, students will not have skipped a beat in their workout routine and will be able to stay healthier and happier through the icy winter months.
