No Gym, No Problem: Making Fitness Work for You

Just about every year (this one included), I make a resolution to become totally ripped, but it rarely succeeds because the gym is too far away, too expensive, and I don’t like waiting for the squat rack. This seems to be a common problem as January is the busiest time of the year at the gym; people steadily give up on their New Year’s resolutions as the year drags on. Surely there’s a better way.

The best descriptor for exercise is that it’s necessary. Physical activity is what we’re built for, what our body is designed to do. Many of the health problems we have today are in part due to our decreasing need for (and therefore decreasing tendency to do) exercise. We don’t have to regularly run from bears, climb trees for fruit, or carry water up a hill; instead, we can close our doors to keep bears out, fill up a shopping cart at the local grocery store (or from our couch!), and turn on a water faucet all with minimal physical effort. While this sounds good and is certainly convenient, our bodies aren’t really designed to be stationary.

Exercise stresses the body. Unlike the stress we get from a medical bill or watching the news, however, this stress is good for the body. Stress is a challenge to the body’s status quo, its homeostasis ^[1]. Homeostasis, which combines the Latin homeo- meaning “like” with the English word “stasis” meaning “the same,” is the body’s attempt to keep itself in the perfect zone of alive-ness. Physical activity forces the body to breathe more air, pump more blood with a faster heart rate, deliver blood faster with higher blood pressure, and burn more energy stored as fat ^[2]. During exercise, the endocrine system releases hormones like testosterone and cortisol, which tell the body to work hard and increase muscle size ^[3].

Contrast this with non-exercise-related stress. In these stressful situations, the body still releases the hormones, but the body can’t respond to them properly. No matter how hard you honk the horn, your body isn’t physically dealing with the stress of a driver watching Netflix and eating a burrito at 80 mph on the highway. With enough non-exercise stress, the body decompensates and stops reacting to stress properly. Inflammation occurs, fat stores aren’t burned properly, and constant high blood pressure and heart rate can lead to cardiovascular issues like heart disease ^[4]. Luckily, exercise can actually increase the body’s sensitivity to stressors, helping reverse some of these issues ^[5]. A large-scale study of 90,000+ veterans found that those who increased their cardiorespiratory fitness, a measure related to physical activity, were associated with much better health outcomes and a 50-75% drop in 6-year mortality ^[6].

So we know that exercise is good for us, but that doesn’t make it any easier to drag ourselves to the gym. One big obstacle is friction - the more steps required to do something you don’t really want to do, the easier it is to find excuses not to do it. Reducing this friction can lead to better adherence to resolutions, like exercise. A schedule can also help. As Dr. Michael Koren says on the MedEvidence! Podcast ^[7],“you gotta get it into your schedule; it doesn’t just happen by itself.” Consistency provides results. Certified exercise physiologist Maggie Rafada says that 150 minutes (2 ½ hours) a week of walking or moderate intensity exercise is associated with health benefits and that you should try for 20 minutes of vigorous intensity activity, 3 days a week. The easiest way I can think of to lower friction and integrate exercise into your schedule is to exercise at home.

Before you get started, here are some important reminders:

• Always warm up and cool down properly (cool down can be a stretching or a light walk) 
• Start slowly to avoid injuries from overuse
• Completing exercises should never be painful
• Listen to your body
• Modify exercises to fit your lifestyle and mobility needs

Here are some exercises you can do at home:

Creative Director Benton Lowey-Ball, BS, BFA

Co-written by Maggie Rafada BS, ACSM EP-C

References:

^[1] Mastorakos, G., Pavlatou, M., Diamanti-Kandarakis, E., & Chrousos, G. P. (2005). Exercise and the stress system. Hormones (Athens), 4(2), 73-89. https://europepmc.org/article/med/16613809

^[2] Raghuveer, G., Hartz, J., Lubans, D. R., Takken, T., Wiltz, J. L., Mietus-Snyder, M., ... & American Heart Association Young Hearts Athero, Hypertension and Obesity in the Young Committee of the Council on Lifelong Congenital Heart Disease and Heart Health in the Young. (2020). Cardiorespiratory fitness in youth: an important marker of health: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation, 142(7), e101-e118. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7524041/

^[3] Mangine, G. T., Hoffman, J. R., Gonzalez, A. M., Townsend, J. R., Wells, A. J., Jajtner, A. R., ... & Stout, J. R. (2017). Exercise-induced hormone elevations are related to muscle growth. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 31(1), 45-53. https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2017/01000/Exercise_Induced_Hormone_Elevations_Are_Related_to.6.aspx

^[4] Kivimäki, M., & Steptoe, A. (2018). Effects of stress on the development and progression of cardiovascular disease. Nature Reviews Cardiology, 15(4), 215-229.https://www.nature.com/articles/nrcardio.2017.189

^[5] Pescatello, L. S., Franklin, B. A., Fagard, R., Farquhar, W. B., Kelley, G. A., & Ray, C. A. (2004). Exercise and hypertension. Medicine & science in sports & exercise, 36(3), 533-553. https://europepmc.org/article/med/15076798

^[6] Kokkinos, P., Faselis, C., Samuel, I. B. H., Lavie, C. J., Zhang, J., Vargas, J. D., ... & Myers, J. (2023). Changes in cardiorespiratory fitness and survival in patients with or without cardiovascular disease. Journal of the American college of cardiology, 81(12), 1137-1147. https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacc.2023.01.027

^[7] Koren, MJ., Geddings, K. (27 March, 2023). Research of exercise. [Audio Recording]. In MedEvidence! Truth Behind the Data. MedEvidence. https://medevidence.com/research-of-exercise

Further Reading

Argent, R., Daly, A., & Caulfield, B. (2018). Patient involvement with home-based exercise programs: can connected health interventions influence adherence?. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 6(3), e8518. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5856927/