Something I find myself chatting to clients a lot lately is movement outside of your scheduled workouts, and with more people working from home now, it seems like more and more people are moving less than before. 

There are no toddles to the water cooler, the printer or to make a cuppa…no commutes, no stairs…just generally less opportunities to put one foot in front of the other meaning hitting 10,000 steps feels way out of reach! 

This is pretty worrying considering the sitting has been described as the new smoking! 

Doing scheduled, regular, structured workouts is great, but for health, fitness and managing body composition the amount we move our bodies is also super important. 

With that in mind, here’s my top tips for moving your bones more… 

1. If you’re only doing say 5,000 steps per day now, doubling that overnight will feel like a hike, so instead focus on doing an extra 1,000 steps per day for a week. That will equate to an extra 7,000 steps in 7 days…it’s not ‘perfect’ but it’s certainly progress. Then keep building from there. 

2. Get yourself some sort of tracker. You don’t have to rob a bank for the latest Garmin or FitBit…just a cheapo step tracker will do. Tracking is important as it’s amazing how you can think you do more than you actually do.

3. Set alarms/reminders to get up and move. A lot of trackers will do this for you…the important thing is you act on it and don’t snooze it 🙂

4. Walk and talk. If you have to listen to a conference call or you need to speak to a client/colleague, do it on the move. Get your headphones plugged in and kill two tasks in one go.

5. Dark nights mean it doesn’t always feel as safe to go out walking alone, so try getting a friend to walk with (walking and talking is literally the best free therapy), or if you’d rather stay indoors, there are tons of ‘get your steps up’ and walking workouts that you can pretty much do on the spot, on YouTube. 

I’d love to hear how you get on with increasing your steps!