Chair Torture . . . I Mean, Exercise

Since I'm stuck in this boot again and in desperate need of exercise, I've been visiting my old friend YouTube for some chair exercise videos.  Last time I ended up with a bunch of videos aimed at people much older than me, and while they had some great stretching and strengthening options (and tended to make me feel relaxed) they never came close to getting my heart rate up.  Let's face it, someone who is used to pushing herself for at least 60 minutes of exercise six days a week, is probably not going to break a sweat in a chair.  At least, that's what I thought.

This time around I had the brainwave to search for "upper body cardio" workouts instead of "chair workouts," and I got a whole different kind of result.  In case you ever find yourself with injured feet or bum knees and you want something a leeeetle more challenging than something intended for someone with no fitness base at all, you might want to check these out.

First, a Jessica Smith chair cardio/strength workout:

This is pretty simple and works a lot of different muscles.  All you need is a chair, a towel, and a pair of hand weights (I used 5 pounders).  I didn't quite break a sweat with this one, but it did raise my heart rate, and I felt like I was really getting some benefit from it.  I could easily manage almost all of it if I took off the boot (except for a little smidgen of the strength part at the end, where I needed to adjust to avoid putting too much weight on my foot).

Second, an upper body cardio video from Jennie B:

This is a doozy.  Trust me, unless you spend a lot of time waving your arms around at max intensity, this video WILL make you sweat.  Possibly scream.  Fortunately, it's short.  (The actual workout is a little less than 12 minutes.)  Sometimes I'll do this twice in a day.  Only if I get a nice long rest in between.  I can keep the boot on through the whole thing, but the chair dips at the end of each round of intervals may give you trouble depending on what kind of injury you have.  (I've been keeping the boot off though, mostly because I don't like how my leg turns into a sweat swamp inside the boot.  Yuck!!!)

I started off my day today kind of grumpy and then quite blue.  But I forced myself to do these two workout back-to-back despite all my mental whining.  Now, I'm off to go forward and conquer my day!  Nothing like a little endorphin boost to help break through the clouds!