I’ve been doing my daily exercise in my pool lately. It is surprisingly easy to get my pulse at a target rate while swimming. Today however it was Friday and I wanted to get the pool cleaned up for the weekend. That put my exercise plan on hold. As I started to brush the algae off the sides it occurred to me that working was probably burning as many calories as mindful “working out.” For that reason, I decided to give myself credit for the work on the pool. Splash, I jumped in and started the chrono stopwatch.
In my 30 minutes of cleaning the sides of the pool I developed a rhythm. “Brush with the right hand, brush with the left.” Did I tell you I was doing the pool cleaning inside the pool? When I stopped the clock, I had been doing a sort of Karate Kid style “Wax on, wax off.” My arms both felt slightly worked and my pulse was just below the target rate. Not bad. I got a dreaded chore done and entered a workout into myfitnesspal.com at the same time.
As long as you have a mantra and a rhythm, I think chores as workouts are a great idea. Try to keep it fluid and don’t get choppy or sporadic. If you think about it, that’s a perfect recipe for a workout on a treadmill or elliptical machine. Chores are a double win though because you actually get something done.
The post Wax on, Wax off: My Pool as a Gym appeared first on Damien at the Speed of Life.
