Staying Fit During a Summer Internship
Whether you have a strict 9-to-5 at a publishing house or a never-ending gig at a financial firm, internships can leave you exhausted. In what free time you do have, you’re likely working a part-time job, taking an online course, or compulsively binge-watching SVU (or is that just me?). So, it can be hard to prioritize your fitness or to remember it at all.
Here are some tips to hike up your heart rate so you can eat those cookies with a clean conscience.
1. Schedule it in
If you always justify not working out by saying you don’t have time, make time — literally. Pencil it into your schedule before or after work, and stick to it as much as you can. It’s way harder to avoid it when you plan in advance instead of trying to fit it in randomly, and this way it won’t clash with another event or make you feel rushed.
2. Find a workout you love
Plain old gymming isn’t for everyone, but there are loads of ways to stay fit, and new classes are cropping up everywhere. Ten years ago, few knew what a barre class was. Today, we have a mind-boggling plethora of options to choose from. Lots of places offer trials so you can try everything from pilates to kickboxing (or piloxing – yes, that is a thing!) before deciding what you enjoy the most.
Services such as ClassPass even let you buy classes you can use at different studios in a city — you could be doing yoga today and Krav Maga tomorrow!
3. Look online for at-home workouts
Going to a separate location to work out can be time or cost prohibitive, but you can definitely stay fit without an expensive membership. Lace up your running shoes and hit a trail, or look up fitness bloggers! Many post routines you can do at home with common household items (water bottles! Corgis!) or just your own body weight.
For example, look up the story of ConBody’s founder Coss Marte, who lost 70 lbs in six months while working out in a 9×6 cell. Anytime, anywhere workouts are in-demand, and there’s a huge amount of resources out there for all kinds of fitness levels.
While it can seem difficult to start a new class or to wake up mega-early to go to the gym, it’s definitely worth it to feel better physically and mentally. Habits can be hard to form, but once they are they’re equally hard to break — soon, you’ll almost enjoy squats and crunches!
Also, to quote movie-lawyer extraordinaire Elle Woods of Harvard fame, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don’t kill their husbands. They just don’t.”
By exercising more, you’re preemptively avoiding a murder charge, or at the very least, setting the stage for a decent defense, all while upping your endorphin levels and your heart rate. Sounds like a good deal to me.