220620 Taking care of yourself mentally and physically during the coronavirus

220620 Taking care of yourself mentally and physically during the coronavirus

Being cooped up in your house is akin to being snowed in during the wintertime. It can almost make a person feel stir crazy, especially if you don’t have some sort of a plan to protect your mental and physical health.

Let’s look at the mental aspects of this first. If all you do during the day is sit around and watch the depressing news about this virus, pretty soon, I am certain it will start getting you down.

Here are a few suggestions to help keep you on track with your life.

Maintaining mental alertness and keeping your cognitive processes fresh

Order books from Amazon, rejuvenate your Kindle library and catch up on all the reading you meant to do over the past year. There are over 400 free nonfiction books listed on the Amazon Kindle site. Simply write “free nonfiction history books for kindle” in the search bar and click on the books you want til your hearts content.

There are literally hundreds of free books just waiting for you to download to your Kindle. I have added children’s books to our Grandkids Fire tablets.

Read your newspapers, read your periodical magazines, or better yet, do some writing and start a blog.

The blog can be something that interests you a great deal. If it is interesting to you, it is going to be interesting to other people too. You may not get a lot of followers, but you are still helping someone out with your information…if it is good that is!

There are several good blog-building sites out there but the one I recommend would be WordPress.com. It is easy to set up and the free version is just that, free. If you upgrade to the premium or the business model it is the same as having a website, which now you do.

At first, I started with a website but eventually it became too costly to operate. By moving over to WordPress, I was able to do everything I could do on the website, at a minimum of what I was paying for the website set up.

You can submit some of your articles to a local newspaper. Write about something that you are interested enough to be involved in as a passionate hobby. Do some research so you know enough about what you are talking about to have at least some basis of knowledge to share with others.

Some people enjoy doing puzzles; personally, I cannot stand doing them. My wife, on the other hand, does all the puzzles she can find, and she is incredibly good at it. Some people play card games on the computer, again I can’t stand that either.

My mental relaxation comes primarily from reading and working in the garage trying to build different weightlifting equipment, fixing our cars, or building something for the house. The latter rarely turns out good enough to put in the house but at least I gave it a shot.

Keeping physically fit

Interspersed between these mental activities are physical ones. Since I have access to a fully equipped gym, that is where I do most of my exercises. However, if I don’t feel like going out there, I go into my office where I have an image 510, 200-pound, stack loaded machine.

DO NOT SKIP ROPE IF YOU HAVE ARTIFICIAL JOINTS. CONSULT WITH YOUR DOCTOR FIRST.

Before starting out, grab a skip rope and get warmed up. Jump for anywhere from 3-6 minutes. This will get your heart rate up as well as your breathing plus it warms up your body so that you are more efficient during your ensuing exercises.

Although I’m not particularly fond of working out with machines, they are better than a poke in the eye and this one does help keep my physical condition somewhat up to par. Not on the same level as it was when I was much younger though.

If you don’t have access to any equipment, there are other things that you can do around your house to maintain your fitness.

For instance, if you have stairs, you can do numerous exercises on them. Here are a few things to try.

Squats to the lowest step that you are safely able to do and immediately followed up with calf raises on the lowest step while holding onto the handrail for balance.

***Be careful of the following if you decide to try them because of the potential for injury going back down with the decline versions.

Do pushups on the steps, working down to the lowest step possible. If you already do pushups try starting at the bottom step and work up into an inclined pushup. Now turn around at the top and start back down to the lowest level and end up with a regular pushup.

Put your feet on the steps for incline crunches, do leg raises off the top steps, try some incline planks (facing the ceiling, facing the floor and on each side). You can also do hip thrusts on them as well.

Another option may be using a solidly built kitchen chair. You can squat to the chair, do calf raises holding onto the back of them, do leg raises to the chest, you can do triceps raises, leg extensions all with the chair and stretch out your lower torso with the chair.

If you have the La-Z-Boy style chair or couch you can work your lower legs by closing the leg rest with your hamstring muscles or do a series of leg raises, leg extensions, flutters, and curl ups in them.

You can do exercises such as leg raises, flutters, and reverse hyperextensions on your bed with your legs hanging over the edge.

If you think you must have the latest and greatest treadmill, think again and just start walking. You can walk around the house, inside the house, walk out to get your mail if you live in a country as I do, or you can walk out in the woods.

If you have a bicycle, get on it and ride it. You don’t have to have all the expensive equipment to get a workout. Once you get this through your head your life is can be much simpler and cheaper and you be just as well off as those spending their money buying useless stuff they use for a week or so and then it collects dust.

The point to all of this is encouraging you to use your imagination to become involved in something to engage both your mind and body.