If you’re a football fan, the fall doesn’t mean back to school, it means football season. Just like to a hockey fan the winter doesn’t represent darker mornings and the spring doesn’t signify pushing the clocks forward to baseball fans, it means your favourite sports on Sundays. It’s time to free-up them up to spend them on the couch, eating chili and watching your Fantasy teams sink or swim.
But it doesn’t have to be a “Sedentary Sunday” every week.
Looking for a simple way to get in some exercise while not interrupting your football or other sports viewing? There are a few options that can help.
First, set-up your Sunday so that you have an hour available prior to your featured games starting. Consider this “pre-game” exercise your “work” before you get your reward of watching sports all afternoon while enjoying some of your favourite foods. Plus, exercising before eating opens up your glycogen storage, allowing your body to utilize your subsequent meals more efficiently.
For your pre-game workout, do 3-5 rounds of the below circuit with minimal rest between exercises to get your heart rate up and burn calories. Rest 2 minutes between rounds.
8-10 push-ups and
8-10 couch dips (no, not the french onion kind); or
20 prisoner squats and
10-20 mountain climbers; or
8-10 split squats per side
If you’re short of pre-game time but still want to get a workout in, bust out that intense circuit at halftime or intermissions to burn a bunch of calories in fifteen minutes. You could even perform 5-10 push-ups or squats at every commercial break if that is more your speed.
Oh wait, that may not work. At every commercial break, you switch to another game to avoid the advertisements as much as possible.
Okay then, how about every commercial or instance where the channel is switched, you have to bang out those repetitions?
If you’re only watching one set of games, say at 1 p.m. or 4 p.m. games, aim for completing three rounds of each of the above. If you’re watching multiple sets of games, aim for 8 rounds of each. If you’re also watching an evening match-up, well, you should be tired enough by then that you will be asleep before the fourth quarter starts.
Alternatively, if you want a half-time/intermission HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) style workout, do as many rounds as you can of the above circuit and then stretch come the second half kickoff.