Here is some information on exercise and some activities you can do at home if you are still impacted by the COVID pandemic. This information was generously provided by physical therapist Ken Johnson from the Indiana Physical Therapy Clinic.

Exercise is medicine — think of all the pills we take for different things and how exercise helps with so many of them. If exercise was a pill, then it would be the blockbuster pill!

Hormone releases from exercise impact stress, anxiety, depression, sleep, prevention of disease (cardiovascular, blood pressure, heart attack, stroke), osteoporosis, etc. It also helps avoid what is called the sick cycle.

Objectives of exercise: improve strength, balance, mobility, and endurance.

Here are some different exercises that you can do. You can benefit more by adding a time element to the tracking of the number of repetitions.

• Standing from a chair
• Upper extremity strengthening through pushups from easiest to hardest: wall pushups, lower surface (countertop) pushups, floor pushups.
• Upper extremity strengthening with elastic bands: high row and high pull down.
• Stair climbing a single step or staircase: lower body strengthening and cardiovascular; can be done for a number of repetitions or for time.
• Lifting: from countertop, from lower surface, from Back position is very important — keeping the back straight and bending at the hips. This exercise gets to helping with our daily function. We want to do this before we need to lift something as part of our daily living.
• Carrying — building on lifting: increase intensity by adding weight and do for time to improve endurance.
• Balance: many people do not realize that balance is trainable…
• Flexibility and Mobility: Special stretches, many on the floor or bed; spinal mobility, flexibility in the legs
• Endurance: increase intensity through longer time periods or more repetitions. Walking is a great endurance activity and is very functional. Time and pace should be modified to keep getting the benefit.
• Exercise Cycles: Every Minute on the Minute (EMOM)
  • Choose one strength, one balance, one stretch and one endurance activity and preform them consecutively for one minute each.
  • Example:
    1. Strength: Sit to stand with shoulder elevation
    2. Balance: marching (30 seconds each side)
    3. Stretch: prayer stretch
    4. Endurance: walk
  • There are 5 different EMOM cycles available in the PowerPoint.

We have included a copy of a presentation Ken Johnson gave at a Calvary Adult Ministry event. This presentation includes much more detail of these exercises, picture and videos. We thank Ken Johnson for this very informative and valuable material. (Click on the image below to open a pdf file of the presentation.)

Keywords: exercising, pandemic, covid-19, covid