Day In My Life-Fitness Edition

If you are anything like me, you made a new year’s resolution to try and be healthier. This could mean eating healthier or exercising more. It can be hard to figure out where to start, so here is how I incorporate fitness into my day-to-day to give you some ideas.

9am: On days that I have a 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. lecture, I try to wake up early and take a longer route to my lecture theatre. Lincoln is well known for having many things accessible by foot. I live near Carholme Road, and most of my lectures are in the Isaac Newton Building. As shown in the image below, here are the two routes I can take. The purple route is my normal route, but as you can see, the orange path is a lot longer. This would add about 10 minutes more to my journey and plenty of steps to my step count.

1pm: Then I can choose which path I want to take home if I don’t have anything else on campus that day.

3pm: On Occasion ( 2-3 times a week), I go to the gym. As a beginner, I don’t have a set routine yet however I always use the treadmill for 30 mins at a 12 incline and at a speed of 3. For days when I wanted to do more than this, there are tons of tutorials online to help me workout whatever area I want to that day. In the university gym, they have different fitness classes you can join for free – even if you are not a registered gym user, including:

• Barbell Club
• Boxing Fitness
• Boxercise
• Pilates
• Legs, Bums and Tums
• HIIT
• Recovery & Mobility
• Running Group
• Spinning
• Yoga
• Zumba

And they also have a Home-Based Exercise Guidelines booklet if you want to do exercises at home, but not sure where to start, on their website and the times for the classes they offer are on their website as well and they offer virtual classes for any students who want those.

6pm: After all that exercise, I am ready to lay in bed with a movie or get some studying done.

As you can see it doesn’t take much to implement some fitness into your day. You don’t have to go to the gym like me, there are other things you can do such as following a quick 10-minute workout on YouTube there are loads of those to choose from. You could take part in some of the activities listed above provided by the university gym. You could also join a sports society. The SU and the Sports Centre (the uni gym) both have a cycle hire scheme where you can book a bike for a particular timeslot.

It’s important to stay active throughout the day especially if you do a course that requires you to sit at a computer for a long amount of time. Exercise increases blood flow around the body which can help the brain work better which we could definitely all use around exam season.