When it comes to not really working out, I’m an expert: I haven’t been for a run for months and the last time I went to a gym, N-Dubz were still relevant. Yet at the same time, I’ve maintained a level of fitness such that I haven’t died (yet – I reckon I have, at worst, five months left.) So what’s my secret? Well, it’s about the little things, it’s all about doing the occasional thing to work out, without really trying.
One of my best tips is being late for things. If you have a lecture at 10am at Exam Schools and it takes ten minutes to walk there, you head off at 9:50, right? That’s just basic maths. NO. That’s wrong. What you do is you leave at five to, because then you’re late and you have to move quickly, be it a fast walk or a slow jog. And when you’re running late, you don’t care what other people think. You don’t care if people judge you or think you’re a bit of a weirdo for running past the Rad Cam in jeans and a t-shirt. What’s more, this lateness principle can be applied to all areas of your life: if you have a tutorial at another college, leave a little bit late. You have queue jump for Wahoo until 10:45? Leave a little bit late. So that’s my first tip: be late, because then you absolutely have to run, whether you want to or not.
So you’re sitting in your lecture, having arrived on time having exercised a little bit on the way there. “No way to work out now”, you say, “I’ve got to sit here and concentrate”. Well, firstly, you shouldn’t be talking during lectures, that’s just bad form; you know better than that. Secondly, why not fidget? You can work out valuable muscles if you just continuously wiggle your foot or tap your hands. Studies have actually shown that fidgeting while sitting still burns roughly 300 calories a day! The people sitting next to you might get a little bit annoyed, but really, they’re just idiots for not realizing the fitness benefits that come from fidgeting during lectures. Frankly, if they’re not wiggling their feet with you then they deserve to be getting annoyed. So fidget away my friend, fidget for the whole hour, work off calories, work your legs – go crazy!
Now, you’re back from lectures. As a reward, you decide to go shopping, to stock up on food and other various items and what nots. But here’s yet another tip: always squat down to have a look at the bottom shelves. Not only do you find the cheaper stuff this way, you’re also doing squats which works out leg muscles or thigh muscles or something. Granted, you may be squatting down so you can grab a ten-pack of chocolate brioche from the bottom shelf of Tesco, but that’s still working out. It still keeps you active, even if the calories and subsequent self-loathing from eating ten brioches in a row completely offsets any kind of benefit gained. You ran to lectures, fidgeted, then squatted to the bottom shelves at Tesco. But now you’re in the library. Surely, surely there is nothing more you can do to work out without really trying. Oh my friend, how little you know. When you turn the page of a book, think about how you do it. You probably just do small movements, you probably just try to get to the next page without any hassle. This is not the best way to do it though; what you should do is great sweeping movements, grab the corner of the page and turn the page with a dramatic flair. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend doing this in front of people as you’ll look less like an Oxford student and more like an orangutan who has just been presented with a book for the first time.
It’s now the evening. Maybe you’re heading out for the evening, maybe you’re just going to stay in and continue to watch Jessica Jones on Netflix (which is a cracking good show by the way). But either way, you want a late night snack, at least I normally do. So whether it’s half-price Itsu or Hassan’s or any other kind of delicacy, you can still keep working out with this one little tip: anything can be a dumbbell. Be it a box of sushi or your kebab, just do a couple of bicep curls with each arm and boom, you’re working out. Keep at it and who knows, maybe you’ll work off enough calories to actually be able to eat the kebab without feeling guilty the next morning. But now you’re in bed, and you are falling asleep. But you can sleep happy, you can sleep happy safe in the knowledge that you’ve worked out, that you ran to lectures, fidgeted away 300 calories, did squats, arm stretches and bicep curls. Who needs a gym when you’ve got these incredible tips.
