When the seasons change, the tasks you need to do both inside and outside your house can change too, especially if you live in a place with four distinct seasons. For people in the northern parts of the United States, when autumn comes, it usually involves activities like gathering and removing fallen leaves, putting away your summer clothes, and taking out your coats and other warmer clothing from storage.
No matter where you live, lots of people like to make their homes and outdoor spaces look nice for the fall season and the upcoming holidays. This often involves taking boxes of decorations out of storage and spending time putting them up. It’s something many folks like to do during this time of year.
Doing seasonal chores like raking leaves can actually help you burn a lot of calories. It can burn even more calories than a brisk walk or weightlifting session in the same amount of time. Also, because these chores are a kind of moderate-intensity exercise, the time you spend doing them counts towards the recommended 150 minutes of exercise per week.
Calculate and track calorie burn of your seasonal chores
If you weigh 170 pounds (about 77 kilograms), doing yard work like raking for an hour burns about 308 calories. On the other hand, walking quickly at 3.5 miles per hour burns about 293 calories in an hour. If you’re doing indoor chores, like housework, you burn around 231 calories in an hour. This is similar to an hour of basic weight training for a person of the same weight.
The calculator gives you an estimate of how many calories you might burn, but remember, these numbers are just guesses. Your actual calorie burn depends on things like how old you are, if you’re a man or a woman, how much muscle you have, how fit you are, and how hard you’re working. If you use a fitness tracker that knows all these details, it can give you a better guess.
Avoid injury and maximize benefits by treating chores like exercise
When you go to the gym, you think about how heavy the weights are and how long you’ll exercise. You also think about how hard the workout will be compared to how fit you are and what you think you can do. For example, if you usually lift 10-pound weigh over your head, you wouldn’t suddenly switch to 50 pounds because you might hurt yourself. You know your limits.
Unfortunately, too many people forget to use that mindset when doing seasonal chores. Some look at the task at hand as simply needing to be done and just do it — or attempt to — without considering their own potential limitations, prepping their bodies for the demands of the task, and keeping in mind proper form and other factors while executing the chore. This lack of awareness can easily lead to injury.
To maximize your fitness benefits and lower your risk of injury, follow the tips below:
Warm up
A warm-up is like a gentle start before you do more intense exercises. It helps your body get ready for the workout. You might do easy movements or light stretches to gradually wake up your muscles. This way, you reduce the risk of getting hurt and perform better during your main exercises.
With any form of exercise, it’s important to prepare for the associated movements and effort. Take a few moments to move your body in all directions and planes of motion while raising your heart rate. Begin with some gentle stretching and progress to movements such as arm circles, walking lunges, lateral lunges, jumping jacks, jogging in place and other similar warm-up exercises.
Use proper form
Just as you would execute an exercise at the gym, you want to perform your seasonal chores with the same attention to proper form. Lifting should be done by bending your knees and using your legs as your main source of power. Stay aware of your balance and maintain stability with a hip-distance or a slightly wider, even stance during most tasks. Whenever you’re twisting, as you would when raking or shoveling, focus on rotating from the middle of your back — never your lower back — to avoid strains.
Switch sides
Because most humans have a dominant side, we tend to favor that side while doing chores. But doing an hour of sided work, especially seasonal work that you don’t commonly do, could lead to significant muscle soreness and overuse injury. That’s why it’s best to switch sides every few minutes. It may feel awkward and slow you down a bit to use your nondominant side, but hurting later will feel much worse and slow you down even more.
Make chores manageable
Be realistic about the tasks you are trying to accomplish. As with the earlier example of not using weights that you know you couldn’t lift, don’t risk injury by trying to do the impossible. Get someone to help with any heavy lifting beyond your capability, break up larger tasks into smaller ones and take breaks as needed.
Stay hydrated
Remember that an adult body is composed of up to 60% water. Even in cooler temperatures outside, we lose fluid through our sweat. That’s why it’s critical to take water breaks during your chores and keep hydrated after you’re done with your work.
Cool down and recover
Because your seasonal work may be less familiar to your body, there is a good chance you will feel sore afterward, having worked muscles in different ways than your normal routine. To lessen the chance of significant soreness, take a few minutes to stretch and breathe after you complete your chores. And then give your body some much-needed recovery by taking time to rest and put your feet up, eat a healthy, satiating meal and get enough sleep.
By following the guidelines above, you can safely maximize the benefits of fall seasonal tasks, getting your house, yard and body in shape for the upcoming holidays.
SOURCE:CNN