5 Exercises You Can Do While Recovering

While strenuous exercise can be a bad idea when recovering from a serious illness, most professionals recommend doing some form of exercise to better build heart health as well as your immune system. Below are 5 exercises that you can do while still recovering. 

1. Walking

The most obvious exercise is simply walking. Walking just a few times a day for around 15 minutes or so is extremely great for your heart health and overall mood. Walking from a cardiovascular perspective can reduce the incidence of heart attack and stroke, improve cholesterol, lower blood pressure. It even has some effects of reducing cancer as well as improving cognition and memory. Some call walking “nature’s best medicine” and we can certainly see why!

Yoga Helps Physically and Mentally

2. Yoga

Arguably the most important factor of Yoga is clearing the mind, which is one of the highly overlooked keys when it comes to recovery. As you learn more and more of the poses, pay attention to your strengths and weaknesses of how your body responds to these specific poses. While yoga can have the appearance of looking easy to do, be aware that some poses can be extremely difficult. So go at your own pace and take breaks if high fatigue starts to sets in.

3. Full Body Weightlifting

The virus can be especially hard on avid weightlifters that frequent the gym on a weekly basis. As we all know, gyms can get extremely busy and full of people so the risk is definitely higher in a gym environment. The best way to stay disciplined while recovering is to create some kind of home gym so that you have limited contact with people. When starting to work out with weights again you will need to really pay attention to your body to ensure you are training at the right level. You can take walking to the next level by doing the following workouts. Start with smaller weights until you are full recovered.

Farmer’s Walk

This exercise is completed by holding dumbbells in each hand and allowing your arms to sit on each side of your body. This is a great exercise to add another level of difficulty to your walks or increase grip strength. 

4. Upper Body Weighted Workouts

Dumbbell Row

This movement can be a little more difficult, but first, you will need to start with a slightly bent back and knees. The dumbbells will rest straight down and you will perform this exercise by pulling the dumbbell upwards, bending your elbow, and pulling your upper arm backward. You will pull the dumbbell as close to your abdominals as possible without rotating your torso. Once you lower these weights back down this completes one repetition. This exercise helps work your back and arms. 

Dumbbell Curl To Press

This exercise targets your biceps and shoulders by first holding dumbbells at each side and curling the dumbbells to your shoulders. Press the dumbbells overhead, lower them to your shoulders, and reverse curl back to the original position. 

5. Lower Body Weighted Workouts

RDL (Romanian Deadlift)

Targeting your hamstrings, RDL’s are known as one of the most effective workouts. Get your feet shoulder-width apart and keep your back straight with a slight bend in your knees. To start this movement, you will need to push the hips back as far as possible while keeping a slight bend in your knees when lowering the weight. You should feel a nice stretch in your hamstrings if done correctly.

Goblet Squat

Lastly the goblet squat is a great quadriceps exercise where you keep your feet shoulder-width apart and hold a dumbbell directly in front of the chest. Your elbows need to be facing inward while your palms are holding up one end of the dumbbell. Your back will need to be straight while lowering into a squat. Continue lowering your body until it is parallel to the floor and return to your original position. 

Conclusion

These 5 forms of exercise are extremely effective in helping to maintain your health in your recovery. As always, be sure to not overexert yourself until your health is fully back to normal.