What I am about to reveal to you can make a drastic change in the out come of your fitness results. Many of us are willing to dedicate a decent number of hours each and every week to our workout plan. But quite often we do not always see the results we had hoped for. Looking at the big picture, the average fitness enthusiast only has about 3 to 6 hour per week to dedicate to their workouts. In a 168 hour week 3 to 6 hours is not really a large number of hours. We can drastically increase the number of hour we are exercising by practicing what is called multitasking. In the fitness industry combining exercise with your daily tasks is referred to as Accidental Exercise.

This type of exercise is great for those people who are very limited with their time. How many times have you waited for an elevator when you could have taken the stairs, or drove around a parking lot searching for the closest spot to the door so you would not have to walk very far? I think you get the point. Implementing more accidental exercise into your daily routine can make drastic changes in your fitness results.

Here are some other accidental exercise ideas that you can implement into your day:

• Shovel snow
• Sweep the driveway
• Mow the lawn – Push Mower
• Rake leaves
• Talk the long way – walking
• Take the stairs
• Park your car far from the door
• Walk to don’t drive
• Stand don’t sit
• Work in your garden
• Walk the dog
• Chop & stack wood
• Play an active sport

(Basketball, Tennis etc.)

The accidental exercises listed above will help you burn a tremendous amount of additional calories throughout the course of a day. In this day and age technology is a major burden on our ability to burn additional calories through accidental exercise. If you were to think back when we didn’t have garage door openers, TV remote controls, microwave ovens and leaf blowers, we had do perform all of these activities manually. These accidental exercise activities that were a part of everyone’s daily lives helped us burn hundreds of extra calories each day.

Not only is accidental exercising a great way to help reduce body fat but in many cases it will improve areas such as muscle strength (including heart strength), lung strength, joint mobility, blood flow, injury prevention, brain function and self esteem.

In conclusion we now know that we can make some small changes in our daily routines that can result in some big changes in our health. It is recommended that everyone involve themselves in some type of exercise program coupled with accidental exercise activities. Accidental exercise is most beneficial when performed in addition to a planned weekly exercise program  If you would like more information about this article and article subjects similar to this one, please e-mail me at or visit us at .

By Craig LePage, CSCS, NASM-CPT, President of Fitness Programs Plus