My step count on a typical work-from-home day used to hover around 800. Eight hundred steps. That’s from the bed to the desk to the kitchen and back. My phone would buzz at 6pm with a “great job” notification and I’d feel personally attacked.

I’m not a gym person. I tried. The membership lasted three months and I went maybe six times. What actually worked was building movement into my existing routine instead of trying to add a whole new one.

The walking meeting

Any phone call that doesn’t require my screen becomes a walking call. I pace around my apartment or, weather permitting, walk around the block. A thirty-minute call turns into two thousand steps without me noticing. My call quality is the same, I think better on my feet, and I don’t have to “make time for exercise” because it’s happening during time I was already spending.

Timer-based movement breaks

I set a 25-minute timer when I sit down to work. When it goes off, I stand up and do one minute of something. Anything. March in place, stretch my shoulders, do ten squats, whatever gets my blood moving. Then I reset the timer for another 25 minutes.

Over an eight-hour workday, that’s about sixteen micro-breaks. It adds up to roughly a thousand extra steps and keeps my back from locking up. I use a simple kitchen timer because phone timers are too easy to swipe away and ignore.

Desk-adjacent exercises

I keep a resistance band looped over my chair. During meetings where I’m mostly listening, I do seated rows or shoulder pulls under the desk. Nobody on the call can see and it stops me from slouching into a question-mark shape by 3pm.

A few other things that fit into WFH life:

• Standing desk — I built a cheap one with a board and some cinder blocks. Switching between sitting and standing keeps my lower back from getting angry.
• Calf raises while waiting — coffee brewing, microwave running, file downloading. Thirty seconds of calf raises. It looks ridiculous but nobody’s watching.
• Floor sitting — I eat lunch sitting on the floor sometimes. Getting up and down from the floor uses more muscles than a chair. It’s a small thing.

I’m not shredded. That was never the goal. But my step count averages around 5,000 now and my back doesn’t hurt at the end of the day. For someone who works from a one-bedroom apartment, I’ll take it.