I always feel sluggish and icky on days when I don't have time to do any exercise, and it seems like some of you feel the same way (Jennierose, maybe?) or are also frequently too swamped to get to the gym, so on those days I've started doing this mini workout:

30 regular crunches
Plank for 1 minute
30 oblique crunches, left side
20 Push ups
30 Oblique crunches, right side
Plank for 1 minute
Jump up my stairs on 2 feet
Jump up my stairs on left foot*
Jump up my stairs on right foot*
10 frog leaps (squat on the floor and then explode upwards and touch the ceiling; works best if your ceilings are at least 7.5' tall)

This takes less than 10 minutes and warms me up in the morning when it's typically about 59 degrees in my bedroom, before the heat kicks on. It's not much, but I'm of the opinion that any exercise is better than none. You can also build on it; say in the afternoon you can also do a mini-workout of squats, lunges, and jumping jacks, and later you park your car a couple blocks from where you need to be and jog the distance instead of walking it, and all of a sudden you've gone from 0 minutes of exercise in a day to 20.

Does anyone else have little mini-workouts they do throughout the day, and do you think they work?

*1-footed hopping is a lot harder than it sounds!! My high school volleyball coach, who also played in the NWFL for the DC Divas as a linebacker, used to have us do different jumping exercises up about 10 long flights of stairs.

That looks awesome! That's perfect for my Wednesday schedule--I work two jobs that day and am busy from 8AM-11PM.

How many jumps on the stairs?

I think the flight has 12 stairs in it (I have low stories).

I might just hop up and down the bottom step. I'm a little scared of falling!

Thanks for the workout idea

Haha, YES, forest, definitely.

This is kind of similar to what I've been doing on my Wii fit when I don't have gobs of time to work out. You're right, it is just enough to get you moving.

I also try and take mini-walks during the day. Like we have a huge town center near my office, so I'll take 20 minutes during lunch to walk over to CVS (for something I probably don't need) and then walk back. The little bit of exercise definitely energizes me.

Thanks for sharing this. I have a similar workout except I use dumbbells for shoulder presses and kickbacks, I also do lunges instead of steps

OMG I think I would wake up my whole dorm room if I hopped on the stairs, We have metal stairs that clang if stomp on them, and it echoes throughout the whole stairwell. It's really loud. Actually one sec I'll go take a pic of them...

Here they are...


And no... there WAS absolutely no need for me to be in that picture... but I never miss out on a chance for a photo op! I'm awful.