How do you exercise during your lunch hour at work w/o a gym

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m looking to exercise on my lunch hour at work, and looked into gyms where I am working now. My current MO is to walk after work, but I’d rather fit exercise into the work day. Gym memberships where I used to live were $25 a month, where I am now they start at $40 a month, which is about $500 a year. I don’t think I want to spend that if I don’t have to. I used to go to a YMCA but there isn’t one in the town where I work, all the gyms are local and privately owned, and prices start at $40/month.

I can’t do any exercise more intense than walking after work because if I exercise late in the day I can’t fall asleep until 3am. I can and do walk after work, but I can’t do things like strength training or cardio because I can’t sleep.

I can’t drive home on my lunch hour because the round trip commute alone takes up half my break. Plus the gas money doing that is probably more than the $40 a month for the gym.

I don’t want to wake up an hour early to exercise before work, I prefer to get up and get out to go to work as fast as possible. I’d rather work out on my lunch hour than before or after work.

I’ve got some orthopedic issues that prevent me from running, so I can’t run around town on my lunch hour.

I could get a bike, if I find a good bike seat. but where do I store it? I don’t think I can fit and store a bike in my car all the time.

My place of work does not have a gym on site. It does have a shower though.

Where I used to live, the nearby park had a lot of gym equipment that was weatherproof (stairmaster, delt exercises, things like that) and open to the public. That’d be good, but I didn’t see that stuff in the nearby park where I work.

Are there other ideas, or methods other people have discovered to do strength training and cardio on your lunch hour w/o joining a gym and w/o driving home to exercise?

I can do walking and maybe biking, but I’m not sure what else.

2

What kind of building do you work in? If it’s a large office building, just map yourself a ‘walking path’ on the outer hallways and maybe throw in a couple of stairwells too. (I used to do this)

I don’t want to sound snarky, but that whole thing about not wanting to wake up early is weak sauce.

You have to learn to make sacrafices and commitments if you truly want to be healthy.

But I’m sure you know that.

Good luck.

3

I have adjustable dumbbells kind of like thisthat don’t take up much space - you select how much weight you want each time you pick them up. They simply leave the extra plates behind. You can use them for a variety of exercises. You can get them much cheaper than this link, I think.

There are chair bikes that basically are a set of pedals that you can use while sitting in your office chair. This would give you a cardio option.
-D/a

4

Just to cut this off at the pass, but I’m not interested in being told I should work out before work, or after work, or ignore my orthopedic issues and run anyway, etc. My goal is to work out during my lunch hour (strength training and cardio) and I want to find a way to do that, if at all possible w/o joining a gym since there are no affordable ones in my area. I’ll join a gym if I have to, but if I can exercise and save $500 a year I’d rather do that.

My current exercise regimen is walking after work, but I’d like to fit strength training and cardio into my routine.

5

I’ve thought about the chair bikes. And I have access to some free weights that I can get pretty cheaply.

I might try working out in the park, most of the body can be worked out with dumbbells. But I wonder if there is somewhere more private I can do that.

6

Given your constraints, body weight exercises that you could do basically anywhere are probably the best you can do. If you’ve got access to a pull up bar of any height, you can do body rows or pull ups too.

Nerd Fitness is a decent resource to start with.

7

Wesley, I hope you realize you OP comes off as apathetic at best.

You list all these things that you wont or can’t be bothered to do.

You might as well have started a thread asking: “How can I exercise while eating cheesey puffs, sitting on my couch and watching TV.”

I really think you need to realize that a healthy lifesyle takes work and can be a pain in the ass.

8

At a previous office, I would just dash out to the back, least-used stairwell and run up and down it, or do stair-stepper type stuff on it for 20 minutes. Bring a couple of those dumbbells that DitnA suggested, and you’ve got a fairly acceptable free workout.

9

stairs?

10

There are lots of strength exercises you can do with resistance bands, and they take up zero space in your office and/or gym bag. Might not work for you if you need a heavy-duty weight workout, but the bands come in various degrees of stretchiness/resistance and can certainly provide a decent weight workout.

11

Do you work in, or are you near to, a building with stairs? Or better yet, a set of stairs outside? Here’s what I’d do:

Find somewhere with five flights (or so). Walk all the way up and down twice. Then, at each landing on your way up, do the following five times - pushups (against a wall, if needed), walk up one flight, squats, up one flight, lunges (five per leg), up a flight, pushups again, then at the top, 20 toe raises. Run back down. Do it again, but this time do four, then three, atc. Pyramid down. Finish off with one more all the way up and down and take a walk to cool off.

Adjust floors, numbers in the pyramid and types of body weight exercises at the landings as appropriate for your fitness level. Increase as you become more fit.

12

Burpees.

You can do enough to wear your ass out, and still have time to eat a sandwich and check your Facebook.

13

I have to agree with Shakes, you sound kind of apathetic. I understand physical and financial limitations but you’ve created such a list of exceptions and conditions that I really have to wonder what do you really think you will accomplish in this box you’ve created? You’re not going to be able to work out in any meaningful capacity in the short time you’re allotting yourself (lunch hour) and with all the restrictions and conditions you’ve imposted.

All I see is this bullet point list being your future excuses for why your attempts at getting in shape have failed.

Sorry to be harsh but I really think you need to re-evaluate if you really want to get in shape. If you -really- do want to, you have to get rid of all this other b.s. and sacrifice.

MeanJoe

14

The OP seems the exact opposite of “pathetic” and “weak” to me - he’s identified a workout routine that fits into his schedule and he’s likely to continue doing, as opposed to trying to be superman and do stuff that he knows will likely fail because of time constraints/his own preferences/physical issues.

I’ll second the idea of resistance bands - they’ve been recommended to me by a pretty smart exercise physiologist working at one of the top hospitals in the country.

As far as cardio, even if you can’t run, you can get a pretty good workout walking fast, especially if there’s a hill or two around. Jumping rope also gets the heart rate up pretty fast, and a jump rope is easy enough to throw in the car.

15

Walk or climb the stairs in the building for cardio. Resistance bands, small hand weights and pushups and sit ups for strength training. Alternate days of the week.

Also, what I’ve read is that while cardio at night will get your metabolism revved and may make it more difficult to sleep, weight training is supposed to do the opposite if you’re really fatiguing your muscles. Maybe you could try walking on your lunch hour and weight training after work and see if that works for you.

Whatever you do good luck!

16

My office building has a gym, but I’m too cheap to join. For exercise during my lunch break I either walk up and down the stairs (eight flights) or up and down the parking garage ramp. Starting at the bottom and walking to the top of the garage and then back down and back up again is one mile, and easier on my knees than the stairs.

17

For the bike storage thing, I would talk to the office manager (or your boss or HR) and ask where you can store it. They should be willing to give you a corner in an office somewhere or a closet or something.

If not, walking is cardio. You can definitely do that on your lunch hour.

The stair idea is a good one but I don’t know if your knees can take it (mine couldn’t).

All-in-all, I wouldn pony up the 40 bucks a month and go to the gym so I can exercise in anonymity and air conditioned goodness. However, my finances might be different than yours.

18

Burpees are amazing and work so many muscles at once. If you have a little space in your office you can look on youtube for “prison” or “bodyweight” workouts. It’s amazing how much you can do without any equipment at all. Added bonus is that many of them are high-intensity interval, so they only take around 15-20 minutes. But then you have to ignore the weird looks from your coworkers when you emerge from your office all red-faced and sweaty.

19

THIS. :slight_smile:
Can you work out in your office?

If you can, go to YouTube and type in Exercise TV. They have a bazillion workout videos there. You will have to look through them to find out which ones are compatible with your physical limitations. You don’t want to injure yourself.

20

Stairs are a good idea, however I work on a one story office building.

The park nearby does have a basketball court, I can get a ball and do that for my lunch hour.