You can perform great chair exercises to burn cardio exercises. Cardio chair routines are the latest fad, and you can burn calories by doing these easy low impact work out and get benefited.
Equipment Needed
Table of Contents
A flat-backed sturdy chair without wheels like another exercise, we need to begin with a good warm-up. Warming and loosening the muscles make them for the movements they are about to do and dramatically lower the risk of injury. Try these warm-up chair exercises.
Neck Stretch
Sit up upright, and gently turn your head near your right shoulder till you sense a stretch. Hold this pose while lightly stretching your left arm down and to the side. You will sense a stretch on your left side neck. Release and return on your other side. Perform 2-5 repetitions on each side. This extent will warm up the neck and the muscles group at the top of your back and get ready for arm exercise.
Shoulder Circles
In a seated position, keep fingertips over the shoulders. Circle shoulders front for fifteen repetitions. Reverse the movement, and circle backward for 15 repetitions. This exercise will warm up the shoulder muscles and lower the risk of strain.
Shoulder Rolls
Sit straight using feet level on the ground. Twist shoulders up to ears and gently turn your shoulders in a circle, back, down, front, and back to the top. When you reach the top, go back to movement. Roll your shoulder front, down, backward, and to the top again. Do ten repetitions in each direction for a complete twenty reps. This movement engages trapezius muscles and shoulders, which are important for raising and carrying objects.
Seated Jacks
Commonly, we begin most rounds with a round of jumping jacks for warming up. What is more improbable is that you can also do seated jacks, which support you burn a good number of calories without becoming drenched in sweat.
How to do it?
- Sit upright with knees together.
- Joint knees and keep toes pointed.
- Your elbows should be flexed and arms open to the sides.
- Your palms should face front. Take both legs outward to the sides and bent your feet.
- Let legs land over the heel and get arms together on the head like a normal jumping jack.
- Now get back to the beginning position and do 25-30 reps in a row.
Skater Switch
This low impact modification of as side skater burns calories while engaging the inner thighs, core, shoulders, and arms.
How to do it?
- Move toward the edge of the chair.
- Flex right knee outward to the side and stretch left leg out to the other side.
- Keep toes pointed and start stretch arms and leaning front.
- Try and stretch the inside of the right foot with your left arm.
- Instantly, switch on and do the similar with your right arm and left foot.
- Take pause and repeat, perform 25-30 alternating reps.
Leg Lift And Twist
This exercise routine is quite helpful for your body. The leg-lift and twist help to tone abs, inner thighs, and quadriceps.
How to do it?
- Sit on the edge of a chair.
- Start stretching right leg straight. Remember to place foot grounded throughout.
- Twist arms on chest and support abs tight.
- Twist the torso toward the right as you lift your right leg to the left knee.
- Press knees together and starts returning to the beginning point.
- Change your sides and repeat.
- Do 15-25 reps.
Hinge And Cross
This exercise routine is a good way to strengthen the back, abs muscles, and lower body.
How to do it?
- Sit straight using knees together.
- Keep your toes pointed and raise hands and get them behind your head.
- Bracing abs, hinge back lightly to make shoulder blades barely reach the back of the chair.
- Twist right elbow and left knee.
- Start to return to the starting point and switch to sides and repeat.
- Do 20 alternating reps.
Chair Running
It is one of the most playful chair cardio workouts. Running from the convenience of your chair might feel funny, but this cycle has been proven to work your abs, arms, and legs while giving you a good cardio workout. Furthermore, with this routine, you can run even when you wear heels.
How to do it?
- Sit straight and stretch your legs.
- Put toes pointed and arms flexed at the sides.
- Support abs tight and let shoulder blades reach the back of the chair lightly.
- Start bending right knees into chest and turn left shoulder to the knee.
- Start flexing right knee into chest and turn left shoulder to knee.
- Pull right elbow back and do sides instantly.
- Alternate and perform 25-30 fast repetitions.
Chair Exercises for Arms
Stronger muscles can offer good balance and stability, which lower the risk of falling. Being stronger also makes everyday life easier. When you can move around with ease, life becomes more pleasurable. Lifting bags and other items that used to weigh you down might serve as a reminder of your improved health and fitness.
Toe Taps
Sit up level with feet extended on the ground. Flex toes near the roof and back to the ground. Sit on the side of the seat with upright legs to make it more challenging. Keep heels on the floor as you flex your toes up and then go back down. This modification increases the range of motion. Do 8-10 reps to increase the strength of muscles and calves with shins.
Bicep Curls
For doing a simple bicep curl, you can go anywhere, all you need is a resistance band set. Begin by choosing your resistance level, from X-light to X-heavy, and then keep your feet on the resistance band, shoulder-width apart. Grab the handles of your bands, curl hands up to shoulders, and palm upward. Remember to place elbows at your sides, and then gently lower the bands. Repeat for a 3-set of 10. Small, lightweight, dumbbells will also provide great work.
Knee Lifts
Sit straight by keeping feet flat. Gently raise right knees near the chest, and then lower foot back to the floor.
Repeat with left leg and perform 10-repetitions each leg, for a complete 20-reps. For an extra challenge, take a pause for 5-count at the top of the movement. This workout strengthens your quads, which is the bigger muscle group in the body. You use quads in every activity and strengthen them to increase strength.
The Benefits Of Chair Exercises
Increased Flexibility And Strength
The bone density and muscles get weak as we get Age. Therefore, gentle chair exercise keeps the body active and balance strength.
Bone density and muscles weaken as we get older. Therefore, it is necessary to exercise gently to keep active and maintain strength.
Increased Coordination
Learning a repetitive nature and routine of exercise helpful for people with dementia. The chair exercises balance posture and spine alignment.
Increased Circulation
Poor blood circulation can cause endless symptoms among aged people from numbness in feet and hands. These problems can increase worse if not treated. It also means a faster healing of wounds and injuries, increased recovery time of sickness, and higher lung capacity and mobility.
Reduced Risk Of Falls
Chair exercises also lower fall risk and improve balance and posture. Balance can be impacted by medication also. Falling and injuries at aged people take a longer recovery time.
Increased Confidence And Self-Esteem
Sometimes aged people lose their confidence, specifically after fall. Doing a gentle chair exercise can bring back self-confidence.
Enhances Mood
Chair exercises also signal the body to release endorphins, which are feel-good hormones to promote mood. It also lowers stress and depression. It is especially important for aged people; stated by Mental-Health-America, over 2-million Americans with the age of 65 experience depression symptoms. Including physical activity in senior care, the routine can be beneficial to their well-being, even with low movements conducted in a chair.
It Increases Stamina
Chair exercises have the surprising ability to increase stamina when you perform enough to increase heart rate. Those cardiovascular benefit helps to promote endurance, making it easier to perform hard moves for longer stretches. Make sure to add these exercises to a routine to get the most benefits.
Reduce Pain
Many aged add chair exercises to their everyday routine to reduce the pain and aches linked with arthritis. Many movements, such as the knees and shoulder circle can lower the linked persistent pain and muscular conditions that increase inflammation in the body. Chair exercise also forces the body to increase posture, which may lower back pain.
It Improves Flexibility
Gradually everyone loses flexibility. Seat practices give seniors a simple method to assemble their flexibility and forestall excessive weight on their joints. The primary demonstration of moving consistently is sufficient to stop an inactive way of life. By combining a couple of explicit seat practices into senior living consideration programs, grown-ups may see a critical contrast in how agile their bodies feel.
Who Can Benefit From Chair Exercise?
- Seniors
- diabetes patients
- Somebody with physical disabilities
- Individual with injuries that limit other types of exercise
- People experiencing chronic cardiovascular illness and congestive heart failure
- Office people who sit the whole day and require to move a bit
Less Mobility Does Not Mean You Can Not Exercise
You do not need to have complete mobility to get the health benefits of exercise. If injury, illness, weakness, or weight problems have less mobility, there are more ways you can use workout to improve health benefits. If disability, injury, illness, and weight problem cause less mobility, there are still different ways to use workout to promote mood, relieve stress, ease depression, enhance self-esteem, and anxiety.
When you workout, your body discharges endorphins, which energize mood, decrease stress, promote self-esteem, and produce a complete sense of well-being.
If you continuously workout currently sidelined with an injury, you have probably seen how inactivity has caused your energy and mood level to sink.
It Is Understandable
Workout has such a strong effect on mood that it can treat light to moderate depression as effectively as an antidepressant medicine. However, an injury does not mean emotional and mental health is doomed to reduce. While some injuries respond well to complete total rest, most simply need to re-evaluate exercise routine with help from a physical therapist or doctor. If you are experiencing a disability, more weight problem, diabetes, other ongoing illness, chronic breathing, and ongoing illness can make it hard to exercise.
Or maybe you have become frail as you age and are worried about injury or falling if you try to exercise. The truth is, regardless of aging, present physical condition, and whether you work out in the past or not, there are more ways to overcome your mobility problems and reap the mental, physical, and emotional reward of a workout.
Which Exercises Are Possible with Limited Mobility?
It is necessary to remember that any workout will provide health benefits. Mobility problems inevitably make some exercise types easier than others, but no matter your physical condition, you should aim to combine three different types of workout into routines:
A cardiovascular workout that increases heart rate and promotes endurance. These can include running, walking, cycling, dancing, swimming, tennis, water aerobics. Many people with mobility issues find working out in water particularly beneficial as they help the body and lower the risk of joint or muscle discomfort. Even if you are confined to a wheelchair or chair, it is still possible to do the cardiovascular workout.
Strength training workout involves using weight or other resistance to develop bone mass and build muscles to improve balance and prevent injury. If you have less mobility in your legs, your focus will be on upper body strength. Similarly, if you have an injury in the shoulder, for example, the focus will more on strength train your legs and core.
Flexibility exercise helps to increase range of motion, lower pain, prevent injury, stiffness, and reduce pain. These may include stretching workouts and yoga. Even if you have less mobility in the legs, for example, you may still get benefits from flexibility and stretches to delay or prevent further muscle atrophy.
Setting Yourself Upward For Exercise Success
Begin to get medical clearance to exercise successfully with illness, limited mobility, or weight problems. Talk to your physical therapist, doctor, or other health care provider about activities suitable for mobility problems and medical conditions.
Speaking to your physician about exercise
Your physical therapist or consultant can help you find a proper workout routine.
How many workouts can I do every day and every week?
What workout or actions should I skip?
Should I use medication at a certain time around my workout routine?
Starting a workout routine
Begin slow and gradually raise your activity level. Begin with an activity you enjoy, go at your own pace, and keep goals manageable. Get pace and keep goals manageable. Accomplishing the smallest fitness goals will help you gain body confidence and let you motivated.
Make workouts part of your everyday life. Plan to work out at the same time every day. Combine a variety of workouts to keep you from getting bored. Make workouts part of your everyday life.
Stick with it
It takes about one month for a new exercise to become a habit. Write down your goals for exercise and a list of purposes, and keep them somewhere noticeable to stay motivated. Focus on short-term purposes, such as enhancing mood and reducing stress, slightly than goals, such as weight loss, which takes more time to achieve. It is easier to keep motivated if you enjoy what you are doing, so find ways to make workouts fun. Watch a TV or listen to a music show while you exercise or exercise with friends.
Expect ups and downs. Do not be discouraged if you limit some days or even some weeks. It happens. Just get started again and gently develop to old momentum.
Staying Safe While Exercising
Stop exercising if you feel pain, nausea, discomfort, dizziness, chest pain, lightheadedness, irregular heartbeat, clammy hands, shortness of breath. Listening to your body is a good way to prevent injury.
If you continue feeling pain after 15-minutes of workout, for example, reduce exercise to 5-10 minutes and instead workout more frequently.
Skip activity involving an injured body part. If you have an upper-body injury, work out your lower body while the injury heals and vice versa. When working out after an injury has healed, begin back slowly, using lighter weights and low resistance.
Warm-up, do stretch and cool down. Do warm-up with light activity like walking, arm swinging, and shoulder rolls, followed by some light stretching. After your workout routine, whether it’s strength training and cardiovascular or flexibility workout cool down with some more minutes of light activity and reduce stretching.
Drink Plenty of Water
Your body does best when it is correctly hydrated. Wear comfortable clothing, such as supportive footwear that will not restrict your movement.
Getting More Out Of Your Chair Exercise
Increase a mindfulness element. Whether you are working out in a chair or walking out, you will feel a great benefit if you see your body in place of zoning out. By focusing on how the body feels as you exercise, the rhythm of the breathing, your feet striking the ground, your muscles tightening as you raise weights. For example, you will not only increase physical condition faster but also feel greater benefits to mood and sense of well-being.
Overcoming emotional and mental barriers helps to workout. As well as the physical challenges you feel, you may also feel mental and emotional barriers to workout.
It is common for people to experience self-conscious about their illness, disability, weight, or injury and wish to skip working out in public places. Some older people find that they are fear of injury or falling.
Do not focus on a health issue or mobility. Instead of worrying about the activities, you cannot enjoy, concentrate on knowing activities that you can.
The more physical challenges you feel, the more creative you will require to be to know a workout routine that works for you.