Fitness Expert Jenny Pacey’s top workout tips for people with no time to spare

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Published on Friday, 03 August 2012 09:45

Last Updated on 21 July 2012

Monica Costa

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We appreciate that the majority of people do not think they have time to factor fitness into their busy lives. Here is the perfect guide to getting fit without noticing that you’re even doing it.

Advice from exercise expert ICON Health and Fitness, which can be found on Twitter @iFitLiveUK.

Fit Tip 1: At Home

The average person spends a lot of their free time relaxing on the sofa. The living room is a “comfort zone” for many people and a place to unwind and relax. However, make the most of this down time by burning some extra calories – you can even keep watching TV!

· Instead of puffing up a cushion to make yourself more comfortable, try sitting on the floor with your heels raised and your abs pulled in. Now, hold a cushion with your arms straight and in front of your chest, rotate your body and the cushion round to the right; tap the floor before rotating to the left, repeat 30 times for a great abs and core workout, which will help define your waist.

· Use the arm rest of the sofa as a platform to perform triceps dips and tone those bingo wings. Move your feet further away from the body to increase difficulty, dip low and see how many you can do. Set yourself a personal challenge and aim to increase the number you complete every time

· Invest in some home fitness equipment to encourage you to work out without leaving the house. Try an hour’s slow walk, or a fast pace interval session on a static bike – you can even watch TV in the process

The ProForm Tour de France Bike is the perfect piece of kit for using whilst you watch your favourite soap. The bike showcases a wealth of interactive features and even replicates the terrain of the Tour de France race – guaranteed to get into shape in no time.

Fit Tip 2: High intensity interval training (HIIT) – fast results!

If you’re short on time but want to see fast results, try HIIT for immediate fat burn and weight loss. This form of training is all about speed and intensity! Use a timer to keep you motivated and on course with your workout.

· 30-second intervals are the ideal place to start with interval training. You need to work hard enough so that the last few seconds feel almost impossible to keep working-out. Everything in your body should be burning, so go for it!

· Try 60-second intervals to completely exhaust your muscles of their stored energy, which will take 24hr to 48 hours to replenish.

· Or try our favourite 40/20 sessions. Work as hard as you are physically able to for 40 seconds, followed by an active recovery for 20 seconds, repeat for 15 exercises with super-setting arms, legs and trunk exercises for maximum calorie burn!

Fit Tip 3: Walking

You can burn up to 300 calories an hour, just by walking and if you increase the speed for a brisk 45 minute walk, then you will dip in and out of your fat burning zone, as well as gaining a low intensity workout. Little tricks we use to increase daily calorie burn and stay slim include:

· Always walking up escalators, and taking stairs instead of the lift

· Park as far away as you can from the supermarket entrance. This way you have further to walk back and forth with the shopping or the trolley and this will burn even more calories

· Ensure you pull in your belly button, and squeeze your shoulder blades when walking to help create perfect posture – and squeeze your backside to activate the glutes and leg muscles.

Fit Tip 4: At Work

We lead active lives and active jobs, from training celebrities to motivating young people and competing for Great Britain. We appreciate many people have inactive jobs and spend long periods of time sitting.

Try our fit ideas to keep you active at work, no matter how long you’re in the office:

· Stand up to make phone calls

· Make regular trips to the water fountain, your body cannot mobilize fat unless you are fully hydrated. And the extra trips to the bathroom will increase calorie burn

· Use a headset, rather than squeezing a phone between your shoulder and ear. You are less likely to suffer shoulder and neck discomfort

· Have an active lunch break. Walk to pick up your lunch, go and meet a friend in the park, schedule a midday session with your personal trainer or walk up and down the office stairwell five times before you tuck into lunch

· Use your office chair as your new gym by doing dips off the arm-rests.

Fit Tip 5: Make the most of wasted time

We suggest squeezing in exercise whenever you can throughout the day, for instance:

· Try squats when you’re washing up

· Jog on the spot when you’re waiting for the bus

· Perform triceps dips off the side of the bathtub whilst you are waiting for it to fill up

· Pedal on an exercise bike, such as the ProForm Tour de France bike, whilst you’re watching your favourite programmes on TV

· Walk the kids to school instead of driving

· Add 5 minutes to your daily dog walk

· See how many crunches you can do during a commercial break on TV

· Dance to your favourite music rather than just listening to it

Do press-ups off the kitchen counter while you’re waiting for you dinner to defrost in the microwave