Five minute body blasts

We often tell you how easy it is to get more active by incorporating some vigorous housework into your fitness programme. Here are some more really simple and cost-effective ways to build a comprehensive exercise programme into your day.

What’s more, you don’t need special equipment or to leave the house and they’re great fun to do. Why not get the whole family to join in?

Choose just one or two “blasts” a day, or do them all in one go for a brilliant whole-body fitness programme.

• Run up and down stairs
• Sit down and stand up from a chair
• Squats
• Skip
• Bounce a ball
• Jumping jacks for 16, then alternate knee lifts for 16 and repeat
• Hula hoop
• Jog or march to one song
• Clean a big window
• Hoover the living room
• Clean the kitchen floor
• Hand wash a jumper
• Mow the lawn
• Sweep the patio
• Step up and down on the bottom step of your stairs
• If you’ve a largish garden, run or walk quickly from one end to the other as many times as you can in three minutes

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