The year has raced ahead and beloved Pancake Day is finally here. Time to get out your frying pans and ingredients and ‘flip’ those savoury and sweet recipes (personal favourite: ham and cheese followed by sugar and lemon, cinnamon and sugar; and nutella); especially as, starting Wednesday, Lent may restrict you from having some of your favourites (that’s if you choose to give anything up).
Instead of seeing Lent as a time to remove specific items from your lifestyle and tease your bodies by having no chocolate, sweets, cake – basically all treats which the majority of people try and do – I thought of a new forty day challenge: take up a one minute exercise each day. This means having to do one measly exercise per day for forty days – sounds more tempting than no carbs or something crazy like that! And you’ll feel a teeny, tiny bit better after doing so (by the end, you’ll have done forty minutes of exercise – that’s a whole gym workout)!
This article will list exercises for the first two weeks, then my later articles will continue the regime.
Stopwatch ready? Let’s begin…
Day 1. Jog on the spot
Day 2. Jumping Jacks
Day 3. Leg raises – get on your hands and knees and raise your right leg, keeping it straight, up into the air to work your bum muscle before bringing back down. Repeat on your left leg.
Day 4. Alternating punches (to the air, no housemates please)
Day 5. Alternating kicks (again, the air)
Day 6. Jumping lunges – instead of stepping into a lunge, jump and switch to the opposite leg.
Day 7. Press-ups
Day 8. Sit-ups
Day 9. Squats
Day 10. Mountain Climbers – Place hands on the floor and put the weight from your knees onto your toes. Arch your back and bring one leg forward bent to your chest with the other leg extended back; then change legs. Do it with speed!
Day 11. Plank
Day 12. Bicycle – lying down with your legs straight off the ground and your upper body slightly off the ground (hold using your abs), bend leg and bring left knee to your right elbow; back to starting position and repeat bringing the right knee to your left elbow.
Day 13. Jumping squats – sink down into a squat and from this position, jump off the ground before landing and going back into the squat position.
Day 14. Alternating lunges
If you manage to tackle these, you’re fourteen minutes through! But remember there’s still another twenty-six; and now that you’ve started, you can’t give up, and so may as well complete the challenge (guilt intended)…
Now, hot chocolate with all the biscuit trimmings anyone?