In this episode, part of our Healthy Holidays series, we talk about staying active and exploring adaptive exercises during the holiday season with NCHPAD Exercise Physiologist John Reams. With more than 20 years of experience in exercise science, clinical exercise physiology, research, and nutrition, John is a familiar face through his work in NCHPAD’s MENTOR program and his many videos on our YouTube channel.
For this podcast episode, John gives suggestions for staying active during the holidays with adaptive exercises, indoor routines to try to beat the cold and fitting in movement during a busy schedule.
Important note: This will be our last podcast for 2025. We will have many new great episodes coming in the new year!
A full episode transcript is available below or on Buzzsprout.
Get notified about new episodes by subscribing on your favorite streaming apps, or follow our social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn to stay updated with new episode announcements.
Where to check out Wellness, Health & Everything Else: A NCHPAD Podcast
Buzzsprout website (no subscription required): https://www.buzzsprout.com/2397451
Streaming apps for podcasts: https://tr.ee/_AxhoopNgN
Episode Transcript
Quick Navigation (click the linked text below to jump to a new section)
- Intro
- Simple, stress free ways to stay active at home or away
- Creative ways for people with mobility limitations to stay active indoors
- Why you shouldn’t wait until January to make activity goals or changes
- Approaching physical activity for those managing fatigue or pain
- The difference between needing to rest and just feeling unmotivated to move
- Modifications to make it easier to be active when it’s cold outside
- Beating the “burning off” holiday meals mindset
- Meaningful and achievable activity goals for the holidays, especially if you face mobility barriers
- Feel discouraged about accomplishing goals or staying active? John has advice
- Creating one new healthy habit toward a more active holiday season
*Edited for clarity*
Host 00:03
This is Wellness, Health and Everything Else: a NCHPAD Podcast.
Welcome to Wellness, Health and Everything Else: a NCHPAD Podcast. NCHPAD is the National Center on Health, Physical Activity and Disability – the nation’s premier center dedicated to promoting the health and wellness of everyone. In each episode, we explore topics at the intersection of health, wellness and mobility limitations. If you have an idea for a topic, would like to learn more about a topic or are interested in our free resources, programs and partnership opportunities, email us at nchpad@uab.edu, give us a call at 866-866-8896 or check out our website at nchpad.org.
Music Interlude
In this episode, part of our Healthy Holidays series, we discuss staying active and adaptive exercises with NCHPAD Exercise Physiologist John Reams. John has over 20 years of experience in exercise science, clinical exercise physiology, research and nutrition, and is well known for his role in NCHPAD’s MENTOR program and videos on our YouTube channel.
John started off the episode with some simple ways to stay active at home or away during this time without adding stress.
John Reams 01:17
I think that trying to remember that the greatest health protective benefits of exercise come from consistency is hugely important, and I’ll use the phrase health protective a lot. So, a health protective mindset, as opposed to an all-or-nothing mindset, is what we want to approach exercise with during times of disruption of schedule, or maybe even environmental disruptions. When you’re going to be outside your comfort zone, be it in terms of environment or availability, try to think in terms of maintenance. Maybe even try to embrace that time as an opportunity to explore some new methods. Possibly, can you pack a set of resistance bands to take with you if you’re travelling? Can you plan a series of body weight movements, or maybe even find an online or YouTube resource that shows you a follow-along workout you can use? Can you engage in shorter durations of exercise, but at higher intensity if you’re pressed for time?
So, this is a huge opportunity to start to engage in what I refer to as exercise snacks, or activity snacks. These are short bursts of activity. It doesn’t have to necessarily be exercise. It can be something as simple as getting up and moving around the space that you’re in, going outside, maybe shadow-boxing for one minute every hour, marching in place during television commercial breaks, maybe 50 to 100 jumping jacks or reaches in as short of a time as possible at three different points during the day, all opportunities to stay active while you’re on a holiday break or in a change from your environment. But they don’t have to be hugely time-consuming, and they don’t have to demand that you set aside specific amounts of time.
Host 03:03
When the weather turns cold, and it’s harder to get outside, John has some creative ways for people with mobility limitations to stay active indoors.
John Reams 03:12
There’s a multitude of resources available online for people living with mobility limitations. The NCHPAD website and YouTube channel host lots of follow-along workout video content, most of which is performed indoors and requires relatively little, if any, space or equipment. Body weight exercises like push-ups, squats, sit-to-stands, dips or transfers, jumps, jumping jacks (seated or standing), lunges, all of these things. These body weight movements can be excellent exercises to perform indoors. The act of getting onto and back off of the floor, five to 10 times, maybe five times where you take your chest into contact with the floor, and five times where you take your back into contact with the floor, has a huge amount of strength, balance, flexibility, and even cardio, depending on the rate you do it at. MENTOR is also an excellent option for these periods of time, because we include seated and standing versions of every workout, and everything is performed in a very small amount of space.
Host 04:24
Many people say, “I’ll start in January.” We asked John why it’s important not to wait until the new year to make activity goals or changes.
John Reams 04:32
So, I feel like this kind of speaks to the idea of exercise as medicine. Physical activity and exercise are directly preventative of multitudes of health conditions like high blood pressure, type two diabetes, and obesity; these are huge risk factors for heart disease, and as we know, heart disease is the number one cause of mortality in this country. Most health concerns don’t entirely arise overnight, and they can’t be significantly improved overnight. It’s going to have to be a process, and the process is going to take energy, attention and time. So, the sooner we begin the process, the sooner we can experience the benefits.
There was actually a huge study that was published a couple of years ago, 2022, in the American Heart Association Journal of Circulation, that looked at 30 years of data collected across 116,000 individuals in the US. That’s a huge number of people across lots of different demographics. The statistical analysis of that showed that the transition from not exercising to performing the minimum amounts of exercise recommended by the CDC provided between 20 and 24% reductions in all-cause mortality. So, just bringing that into a simplified view, you could be 1/4 less likely to pass away or die within the next 12 months, simply by beginning to engage in just the minimum recommended amounts of exercise on a weekly basis.
The holidays can be a perfect time to begin to make small, incremental changes in your exercise routine, because so often we’re already in a period of schedule change. This goes back to that idea of exercise snacks or activity snacks throughout the day that we mentioned, and these can be a great option if you find it to be inappropriate for your schedule, trying to schedule a longer-duration workout. They’re not the same; they don’t accomplish exactly the same thing, but again, it’s still a small step in the process of beginning this journey.
Host 06:47
We asked John how individuals managing fatigue, pain, or fluctuating energy levels can approach physical activity during the holidays in a flexible and realistic way.
John Reams 06:57
I think first, it’s going to be important to determine your individual threshold between discomfort and pain. I say this because exercise performed at a level of intensity that has the potential to stimulate health-protective change is going to be uncomfortable. Exercise is a stressor on the body, but it’s an acute, short-term stress that has health-protective benefits. So, this isn’t like the chronic stress scenarios that we hear about that are so detrimental to our health. Discomfort and pain are very different sensations. Pain is an intense warning signal that potential injury can occur. Pain doesn’t improve following a period of warming up, whereas discomfort is unpleasant, but it’s still a manageable sense of unease. Discomfort is neither a signal that something’s going wrong, nor is it a signal that you should stop.
Also, one size does not fit all. Minimum recommendations for exercise aren’t the least amount of exercise that’s beneficial; they’re simply the least amount that has been shown to produce similar results in most people. Sometimes, I think we see minimum recommendations for exercise, and it can seem daunting, especially if we’re not currently engaged in exercise programs. 150 minutes a week can seem like a lot. Mountains of progress can be made toward a more health-protective lifestyle, still below the minimum recommendations and also without increasing pain. Most people find success through focusing on reaching the minimum recommendations for time or duration of exercise first and then progressing towards increasing their intensity levels. For example, we know in the current state of science that 10-minute durations of cardio have been proven to provide a number of health protective benefits. That’s not to say that doing 15 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of cardio, 30 minutes of cardio, won’t provide a greater benefit, but 10 minutes has been shown to produce those benefits in most people.
One thing to think about when you’re trying to get cardio or cardiovascular, respiratory-focused exercise is to get your whole system excited. Try to get your heart rate increased, your breathing rate increased, and your circulatory rate increased, and you can do this simply by engaging as many muscles as you have voluntary control over and movement simultaneously. It doesn’t have to involve running, it doesn’t have to involve swimming, it doesn’t have to involve cycling. These are some ways to accomplish that, but jumping jacks accomplish the same thing, and getting up and down off the floor can accomplish the same thing. Punching, shadow-boxing (seated or standing), using upper body and lower body movement, or entirely upper or entirely lower body movement can accomplish this.
Host 09:55
Here’s John describing how someone can tell the difference between needing to rest and just feeling unmotivated to move.
John Reams 10:01
Because we know that the benefits of exercise are experience-dependent, meaning we’ve got to engage in it to experience the benefits of it. In addition, we also know that they’re cumulative, and unfortunately, they’re reversible. Meaning, if we stop exercising, we will no longer have those benefits that we gained from having done it. Because of this, I encourage everybody that, unless you’re experiencing pain, and instead maybe feeling a desire to rest or a lack of motivation to exercise, try to set a minimum goal of 10 minutes for engaging in some movement practices or some exercise practices, and then after that 10-minute period, reevaluate how you feel. This is your warm-up period.
A lot of times, once we begin to move. And therein, we achieve that increase in heart rate, increase in breathing rate, and an increase in circulation or circulatory rate. These all add up to increasing the internal temperature of our body, our core temperature, and we’re going to not only feel a little more motivated, but we’re probably going to feel a little more capable of continuing to exercise. And beyond that, don’t worry about whether you don’t enjoy the idea of exercise, or if you don’t enjoy the actual act of exercise. Most people don’t look forward to it and don’t enjoy the actual act. It’s the benefits of it that most people enjoy.
Host 11:30
We wanted to know some examples of adaptive equipment or small modifications to make it easier to be active when it’s cold outside.
John Reams 11:37
Super important is performing a warm-up prior to entering that lower temperature environment. Also, wearing layers of clothing that you can take off incrementally as you experience an increase in the internal temperature or core temperature. These are just a couple of simple things that can help to reduce some of the friction between wanting to engage in exercise but feeling like there are either environmental or temperature-based barriers.
Host 12:05
John provided a healthier mindset of approaching movement instead of “burning off” holiday meals.
John Reams 12:10
There are so many health protective benefits that come from consistent exercise and physical activity practices, in addition to the number of calories that you expend during that workout. Maybe try to reframe the way that we think about why we’re exercising, and focus on some of the emotional, cognitive and functional benefits of it. Emotionally, exercise has a huge impact on helping us to experience an increased sense of self-efficacy and self-confidence in being active. There’s a lot of problem-solving that goes on, so there are cognitive benefits and then improvements to our cardiovascular, respiratory and muscle health systems. I firmly believe that most of us devote time and energy towards exercise because we ultimately trust that it’s going to lead us toward living with the greatest amount of physical independence possible. Calorie or energy balance is just one important component of that scenario.
Host 13:11
We asked John how someone can set meaningful and achievable activity goals for the holidays, especially if they face barriers to movement.
John Reams 13:18
So again, I think treating exercise as medicine can have a huge impact on reducing some of the friction that a lot of us experience between wanting to be more active and wanting to exercise, but actually feeling like we have the opportunity to actionize those intentions.
So things like setting appointments with yourself and then treating them as you would any other part of your schedule can be beneficial, and maybe even beyond that, determine your individual reasons for why you want to begin to exercise. Motivations are complex, and they change at different times in our lives. There are extrinsic and intrinsic factors, and sometimes we might begin an exercise regimen with an extrinsic motivation, meaning there’s an event coming up that we want to lose weight for, or possibly there is a gathering over the holidays that we want to be able to move around the gathering more easily. Hopefully, after we’re exercising for a period of time, that extrinsic or external motivation transitions to an intrinsic motivation, meaning we begin to, or we continue doing, the activity or the exercise, because we’ve come to a recognition that we feel better, just in general, after having been involved in it for a while. Whatever your motivations are, they’re never right or wrong. They’re simply reflections of your individual priorities. So I would encourage determining that as a method of trying to make it a little easier to set meaningful and achievable activity goals for the holidays.
Host 15:04
Here’s John’s advice to anyone who feels discouraged when it comes to accomplishing goals or staying active.
John Reams 15:09
Number one, avoid comparison culture. You are an individual, and you have your own feelings regarding exercise and physical activity. What or how someone else engages in exercise has no direct impact on your outcomes. Try to come to a recognition, though, of physical activity and exercise being a necessary part of your lifestyle that’s going to help you become the best possible version of yourself. One idea might be trying to think in terms of the type of person you want to be, as opposed to focusing solely on what you accomplish, meaning thinking in terms of, I want to be a person that consistently includes exercise in my daily lifestyle, as opposed to thinking in terms of, I am going to exercise for 90 minutes every day for the next two months. In terms of what exercises you choose, the concepts are pretty few, and the methods are many, so the specific regimen you choose doesn’t have to look a certain way. Do try to include three days a week where you focus on cardio-based activities and three days a week where you focus on muscle strength-improving workouts.
Host 16:24
Here are John’s final recommendations for creating one new healthy habit toward a more active holiday season.
John Reams 16:30
I would suggest trying to focus on what you can do to be more active just today. You don’t have to worry about how you might include exercise every day for the rest of your life. You don’t even have to worry about how you’re going to include exercise every day for this holiday season. Just try to make the change for today.
Host 16:51
Thanks for listening to Wellness, Health and Everything Else. For a full episode transcript, visit our website and find the episode in the podcasts and videos section. To check out our Healthy Holidays content, visit our website and find the link in our main menu. You can also find more exercise content on our website in the resources section or on our YouTube channel. If you have questions about NCHPAD’s free resources, programs and partnership opportunities, email us at nchpad@uab.edu, call us at 866-866-8896 or check out our website at nchpad.org.