Exercise for Stress Relief

Push-ups:

Push-up Variations

The perfect pushup works multiple muscle groups including the chest, anterior deltoid, and triceps. And the great thing about it is that the exercise can be easily modified to increase difficultly and work different muscle groups.

Narrow/Wide Hand Placement. By simply adjusting the placement of your hands, you can emphasize different muscle groups. Narrow hand placement works the triceps, while a wider hand placement emphasizes the pecs.

Squats:

Squat Variations

The squat is one of the most basic yet effective athletic movements. In just one exercise, you work your quads, hamstrings, glutes, hips, and inner thighs.

The traditional bodyweight squat is performed by placing your hands behind your head. Squat down until your thighs are below parallel. Come up. That’s one rep.

Burpees:

Burpee Variations

The burpee is the ultimate full-body exercise. Just one simple movement tests both your strength and aerobic capacities.

Basic Burpee. To perform a basic burpee, just follow these instructions:

• Begin in a squat position with hands on the floor in front of you.

• Kick your feet back to a push-up position.

• Immediately return your feet to the squat position.

• Leap up as high as possible from the squat position.

Burpee With Push-up. Perform the burpee normally, but after you kick out your feet to a push-up position, go ahead and do a full push-up.

Sit-ups:

• Lie down on your back. Bend your legs and place feet firmly on the ground to stabilize your lower body.

• Curl your upper body all the way up toward your knees. Exhale as you lift.

• Slowly, lower yourself down, returning to your starting point. Inhale as you lower.

Deck of Exercise:

Take a standard deck of 52 cards. Assign one of the above exercises (or one of their variations) to each of the four suits. So you could have something like:

Clubs: Push-ups

Spades: Burpees

Diamonds: Squats

Hearts: Sit-ups

Start drawing cards from the top. The suit tells you what exercise you’re doing; the number tells you the reps. Face cards count as ten rep; aces 11. So if you drew the 5 of diamonds you would do five squats; if you drew the king of clubs, you do ten push-ups. Draw the cards and perform the corresponding exercise and reps until all the cards have been drawn.

Finish it off with ten burpees for good measure!