Too Tired to Exercise? Feel Better in Just 10 Minutes Walk | 56

Too exhausted to work out? This 10-minute low-impact walk gives you energy, clears some brain fog, and gets you around 1,000 steps... in less time than it takes to drink a coffee. 

It’s a quickie walk for days when you feel like a zombie but still want to do something (for your body and mental health).  

You can do this at home walk on a treadmill or walking pad, or outside.

 If you’re walking outside, there’s a bell at the halfway point so you know when to turn around… without having to think about it.   

While we walk we’ll energize with some easy breathing, glute squeezing (your own glutes), and I’ll give you tips to get your energy back super fast.

You’ll feel more awake, maybe a little happier (yihaa!), and glad you moved, even on a day ya’ almost skipped it. And no beating yourself up. The "caffeine queen" says so. 

I also wander off into Hashimoto’s disease, 1000 cats, not drinking coffee until the age of 37, missing out the whole 80s cocaine craze, and Shakira (whenever, wherever).

Tap follow so the next walk is waiting for you. 

Transcript

0:00

Start walking at your easiest normal warmup pace. It's a pace that you can hold even on your low energy days. And if you're here with me, I'm guessing you're tired and not really in the mood to work out. You don't have to crush anything today. Crush it real good. Boop, boop, boop, boop. We're just going to get moving, generate some energy, and hopefully find ourselves in a better mood. You can do this, walk inside on a treadmill or walking pad or marching in place, or walk outside. And if you're walking outside, there'll be a bell at the halfway points in case you want to turn around. Take a deep breath in through your nose, really fill up those lungs. This is a secret of how we make energy. And then exhale. Whenever you're feeling tired, start by breathing first, because breathing is like a miracle. Or maybe it's the oxygen. The oxygen is like a miracle. And I'm all too familiar with being tired. I have Hashimoto's disease, which is autoimmune hypothyroidism. I also don't sleep real well. Maybe 'cause my back hurts. I have a thousand cats. I'm really sensitive to noise. The first time I went to the doctor because I was so tired was when I was 16 years old. And of course, they couldn't find anything wrong with me because of why would they? My whole adult life, I've been dragging and I've been drinking lots of caffeine, although I didn't drink any coffee until I was 37, and I don't know what's up with that. I was a tea drinker, but now I'm a big coffee snob. Stay with the same pace. We're going to loosen up our shoulders, so you're going to take another big breath in, and then you're going to shrug your shoulders up towards your ears like you're holding two heavy trash bags. I do this sometimes with weights in my hands. And then open your mouth, exhale and drop those shoulders. And then one more time, take a big breath in. Shrug those shoulders up towards your ears as tight and hard as you can. You'll hear my voice change as I do this. And when you breathe out, exhale and drop those shoulders down. Okay, one more time for good measure. And nobody's looking. You can open your mouth, take a deep breath in, shrug those shoulders up, up, up towards your ears. Tight, tight, tight. Open your mouth, breathe out and drop the shoulders down. If you're like me, you have really tight shoulders. And tight shoulders are an energy leak. So when you drop them, that blood flows back into your neck and brain and it's a little bit of a "Hey! There's a path now that wasn't there before." So whenever you feel tight or you feel really tired, try doing that at home or when you're walking or not in the car, unless you are at a red light. We're not going to carry the whole world on those traps, right? We're going to take those trash bags off your shoulders. And when you breathe in, make sure that you relax your stomach so you can really fill up those lungs all the way. Get all that oxygen in there. Oxygen is free. We're going to go a little bit faster. Just skirt right out of our warmup pace, but not something too scary or hard yet. So now we're going to make some gentle fists. So not like a death grip. You're not holding really heavy weights, you're just hiding the little piece of candy from your kids. Then you're going to tighten your forearms and then tighten your biceps. And we're doing this while we're walking, so it may look or feel a little weird, but we can do it. Hold it, hold it, and release. And then shake your hands like you're flinging off water or telling your dog your cat to go away. And just one more time. So make your gentle fists kind of like you're giving blood where they're taking blood at the lab.. And then tighten your forearms and now tighten your biceps. Feel those muscles. Hold it, hold it, two, one, and then release, and then shake out your hands again. This is another little wake up trick because when your brain notices that you're squeezing your hands like that, it sends out a little ding, ding, wake up signal to your brain, and then when you let go, your whole system gets a quick reset. It's like hitting refresh on that super tired browser with 500 tabs in. This time, just roll your shoulders backwards. Big, big rolls. Get all that remaining tension out. And then roll it forward, roll it forward. And remember that you always feel better after some exercise. Partially it's because of the oxygen and because just the movement. And sometimes I just slap on a smile like I'm seeing a dog I don't know. And that really helps give me more energy and then bring me out of any funky mood that I'm in. I used to have a training company with a couple of friends of mine, and we had a slogan."If it was easy, everyone would do it." Well, it's not always easy, and sometimes we don't feel like it, but that's why we're here today. No matter how tired we are, just get a quickie in. Okay, go a little bit faster. Just one notch. If you don't feel like it, stay where you are. I'm not judging you. I'm not the boss of you. Now, every time your heel lands, you want to give your glute a little squeeze to push you forward. So it's not, it's not a big clench because that would be weird and hard to walk, but just a little squeeze as you push yourself forward. And then the other leg, squeeze and push, squeeze and push. It's a quick on, quick on, squeeze and push. Focus on that glute. Focus on pushing yourself forward by engaging your butt and then notice if you feel a difference between just falling into your next step or pushing the ground away behind you. Your glutes are one of your biggest muscle groups. When you engage them and when they start to help, then your back and your legs don't have to work as hard and you get a little bit more oomph for that same effort. So as we're squeezing our glutes, you can still walk like you mean it, going to fake yourself out. And we can even do this on tired days. Just pretend that we're full of energy and vim and vigor. I don't even know what vim and vigor is. Stay with that same pace now. Whatever feels good for you, it's a moderate pace. Not too fast. Not too slow., And we're going to clear the fog out of our brains. And this is going to be kind of weird, but nobody's watching. We're going to do two short inhales through your nose, sniff, sniff, and then a long, slow exhale through your mouth. And then one more time, two short sniff sniffs, and then a long, slow exhale through your mouth. I want you to do a few more rounds. The sniffs sniff reminds me that I missed out on the whole cocaine thing in the eighties. You know, I didn't do any drugs and I was boring and worked all the time, and so just the sniffs sniff kind of reminds me of that. TMI probably, but that's okay. A few more rounds. Keep breathing. This kind of breathing helps clear out the extra carbon dioxide and tells your nervous system that you're safe. You're okay? A little less fog, a little more. Okay, I can do this. Stay with that pace. We're not going super hard at all today. We're just getting that fresh oxygen into your body. Going to give yourself a little oil change. That's what I like to call it. And you can use these techniques "whenever, wherever". I don't know the words to the song. It's Shakira, but you can do it whenever, wherever you need to. You can do the double sniff breathing. If your brain feels a little bit sluggish, you can do the glute strut. You can reset your tension by squeezing your hands, and then your forearms and your biceps, and of course the trash bag shoulder drop. Now you're going to slow it down a little bit. See how fast today went. It was like a super quick walk. Keep your breathing going. And hopefully just getting out there and breathing and squeezing your shoulders, you feel a little bit more refreshed than you did 10 minutes ago, and you didn't find energy. You made energy, because those little combinations we did, they really help us make that energy that we need. Deep breath in again, nice and slow. Everything's relaxed. You're going to inhale, exhale, naturally, slow it down a little bit more. If you felt like this walk gave you a little more energy, ride that wave into one small thing, whether it's answering an email, switching the laundry from washer to dryer, doing the one little thing that you needed to do and you haven't felt up to it. Because this tiny action keeps that energy going. And we're going to cool it down a little bit more. Just relax and walk. You can save this walk as an emergency energy walk for future for tired days. There's more of the tips that you can actually use while you're walking to help you feel better. And don't forget to hit follow. So that way my next walk is there waiting for you. And you can connect with me on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook on yourwalkingpodcast. Tell me about your walk. Tell me about your lack of energy, and I'll tell you about my lack of energy. And the caffeine Queen says, I'll see you next time.