Workcercise: Getting Your Exercise On While Doing Household Chores

Going to the gym isn’t the only way to get a good workout. Doing chores around the house can give you the exercise you need while making yourself useful at home. Here are a few household chores that burn a good amount of calories just like you would if you hit the gym.

7 Chores that Could Give You a Good Workout

1. Car Washing

If you know the movie The Karate Kid, you know that Mr. Miyagi has unconventional ways of training Daniel LaRusso. One of these is washing and waxing cars.

Wax-on/Wax-off does more than just block enemy attacks. It also promotes rotational movement on shoulders and strengthens its stabilizing muscles. To get the most out of this chore, wash in both clockwise and counter-clockwise directions to hit all three motion planes.

2. Vacuuming

While vacuuming’s pretty obvious benefits are lat and tricep workouts, the real deal happens in lifting and moving furniture and appliances out of the way. When you do this, make sure to take on the proper form of lifting furniture as you would a loaded barbell. This will help avoid cramps, muscle pains, and injuries.

3. Mulching

Mulching is one of those seasonal tasks that is underrated as a total body workout. It hits your arms, core, and legs with all the lifting, stretching, and squatting you do. Just make sure that fertilization has already been done before you lay down the mulch so that your lawn will be healthier and more beautiful in full bloom.

4. Pruning and cutting trees

Whether you use an electric or manual saw, pruning and cutting trees make for good lat and workout. It offers an overhead variation to lat exercises that’s very rarely done in gyms. It also lets you become more aware of your body as you need to keep your core and legs engaged to give you a good solid stance. This helps minimize the risk of injuring your back.

5. Cleaning the basement and garage

With all the items you accumulate, a lot of them are bound to go into storage. One of the most daunting and overwhelming chores that need to be done is cleaning the garage mainly because of all the clutter you need to drag out and sift through.

All the lifting, pushing, and pulling will require your entire body to be engaged – arms, core, back, and legs. At the very least, you should get about 90 minutes of full-body workout on this, depending on how packed your basement or garage is.

6. Painting

Another Mr. Miyagi classic, painting makes for a great exercise because of all the rotational moving, squatting, overhead pressing, and stretching done to finish the task.

Just take note that to avoid injury, you need to stabilize your ladder and position it in a way that you don’t put too much strain on your neck.

7. Removing fences

While taking down fences isn’t a regular chore, it is one of the most physically exhausting DIY tasks one can do. Think about it. You need to dig out fence posts anchored to 40-pounds of concrete then haul or carry them out to the curb or truck. If that’s not a full-body workout, then we don’t know what is.

One important thing to note is that even though these chores burn a great number of calories, you need to also watch your diet and take the right supplements to maintain a healthy and fit lifestyle even if you don’t go to the gym.