Regardless of background, we’ve all had seasons of life where physical activity has taken a back seat to other priorities. However, it can feel very difficult to reverse this process once we’ve been sedentary for quite some time (6 months or more).
The fact remains: your physical therapist wants you to have a habit of daily movement! Why? Because the chances that you’ll re-injure yourself (or worse) drop dramatically if some simple, regular exercise is part of your daily routine.
In this article, we’ll cover what we think are the best exercises for sedentary people, and provide a quick sample plan you can begin following right away!
A note before we begin
We are assuming in this article that you currently have a clean bill of health. In other words, a doctor or physician would declare you “healthy,” aside from the fact that your lifestyle is what we’d call “sedentary” or “inactive.”
If you’ve got preexisting health conditions, you may find that they preclude you from completing some of the exercises on this list, and you’d be better off working directly with a professional who can take your health history into account while they develop a personalized program for you.
The best exercise for sedentary people
Despite the fact that we’re constantly working with patients on nuanced exercise and recovery plans for specific injuries, there’s almost nothing that will improve general health outcomes more than simply having a healthy heart and maintaining a healthy body weight.
Both of these goals can be effectively supported by a practice of daily walking.
As we outlined in our article on how much exercise we actually need, brisk walking is one of the lowest impact and lowest risk exercises that will pay dividends for our health.
We recommend that you get started by:
- Take frequent walks of 5-10 minutes
- If you’re unsure of how your body will handle this practice, feel free to do this every other day in the beginning
- Over time, increase the frequency of your walks to once per day and eventually twice per day (morning and evening tend to work best, though you can be as creative as you wish with your timing)
- If you’re attempting to lose weight, use this practice to support your weight loss process
Why walking?
Though there are numerous ways to achieve the benefits of regular low-intensity cardiovascular exercise (swimming, cycling, etc), walking tends to be the most accessible. We’ve all got shoes, and we can all find 10 minutes to spare.
If we follow the recommended routine above of twice daily 10 minute walks, we’ll have achieved 140 minutes per week of low-intensity cardiovascular exercise. This is just barely short of the 150 minutes per week recommended in the Physical Activity Guidelines for Adults. In other words, just this basic practice can make a huge difference in our health, and it can also support:
- Improved balance
- Improved cardiovascular endurance and function (lowered risk of heart disease)
- Improved bone density
- A slower rate of muscular loss over time (sarcopenia)
- Improvements in mental health and sleep (also critical for long-term health!)
Additionally, walking for 10 minutes shouldn’t require any specific time-consuming warm-up or cool-down phase, which could potentially make the plan take much longer than 10 minutes. Simply throw on your shoes, leave your home or office, and don’t return for 10 minutes!
For this reason, we suggest that if a sedentary person was to pick just one physical activity, it should be walking.
What about other forms of low-intensity cardio?
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that walking can, of course, be substituted with any form of low-intensity cardiovascular exercise you choose. If you find your body doesn’t prefer walking as your chosen type of exercise, maybe 10 to 30 minutes of gently swimming laps once or twice per day would be a better fit.
In other words, you’re welcome to substitute any form of low to moderate-intensity exercise that you’ve got access to:
- Rowing machines
- Cycling
- Treadmill walking (preferably with a slight incline of around 6 degrees)
Rounding out the plan with other exercises
If this plan seems overly simple, that’s because it is.
We’re just talking about possibly the most simple way to satisfy the recommended amount of exercise that would bring you up into the recommended amount. In other words, we’re looking for the practice that will provide the most disproportionate return-on-investment in regards to our health.
That said, there is another half to the recommended physical activity guidelines: resistance / strength training.
Luckily, satisfying those requirements can be accomplished with a very low time investment as well. Using micro-workouts to fill the role of resistance training provides a very time efficient way to satisfy this requirement:
Covering all major muscle groups of the body, twice per week, should be enough, and can be done fairly easily on 3-5 minutes per day (see sample routine below).
Guidelines for beginning exercise after being sedentary
Based on our experience, here are some general guidelines for getting started:
- Don’t be in a hurry! Start slow, and focus on building habits instead of doing things perfectly.
- Don’t be afraid to take days off in the beginning. If you experience delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) for more than 1-2 days, that’s a sign that you’re overdoing it. Wait for the soreness to subside before trying again.
- Stop and listen to your body if you experience pain. Consult a professional if needed.
How to start exercising after years of inactivity
It doesn’t matter who we are, we’ve all gone through periods of higher and lower physical activity as the years roll on. However, when we find that it’s been years since we last donned our running shoes or hit the gym, the prospect of returning can be more daunting than if we were simply taking a month or two off.
This is totally understandable, and we’re commonly asked how to start exercising after being sedentary for years.
A sample exercise plan for sedentary people
Though there are an infinite number of potentially effective ways to put an exercise routine together to satisfy the above requirements, here is a very simple way to structure your weeks that focuses on:
- Minimal time investment
- Habit forming through daily repetition
The plan:
Monday
- AM: 10 minute walk
- During the day: Lower body micro workout (3-5 mins)
- PM: 10 minute walk
Tuesday
- AM: 10 minute walk
- During the day: Upper body micro workout (3-5 mins)
- PM: 10 minute walk
Wednesday
- AM: 10 minute walk
- During the day: Core body micro workout (3-5 mins)
- PM: 10 minute walk
Thursday
- AM: 10 minute walk
- During the day: Lower body micro workout (3-5 mins)
- PM: 10 minute walk
Friday
- AM: 10 minute walk
- During the day: Upper body micro workout (3-5 mins)
- PM: 10 minute walk
Saturday
- AM: 10 minute walk
- During the day: Core body micro workout (3-5 mins)
- PM: 10 minute walk
Sunday
- AM: 10 minute walk
- During the day: REST!
- PM: 10 minute walk
Whether you’ve got big fitness goals or not, this basic amount of physical activity will pay dividends over the long haul, and should provide you with an easy solution to stay active.
Of course, you’re welcome to build on this routine as your fitness level and level of motivation changes over time. However, we want to make it clear: someone who completes a basic routine like this will be world’s ahead of their former, sedentary self.
Try it for yourself!
