Fitness workouts Miranda Murphy says you can do at home

Miranda Murphy explains how toilet rolls, bunk beds and kids’ shoelaces can help you improve your fitness.

Shoelace squats: The ultimate home exercise.

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I JUST got a bike for my birthday. A bike! With wheels and a bell and everything!

This is big news, as I haven’t done any exercise since 2006.

Still, I’ve promised to take it for rides regularly, look after it and clean up after it. At the moment it sleeps in the hallway but soon it’ll be allowed to sneak up onto our bed for the night.

The helmet was almost as expensive as the treadly and I’ll be dropping more cash on handlebar ribbons and spokely dokelies.

The last time I was this excited about a new bike was Christmas at age six, when my parents made me close my eyes as they wheeled in my fantastic present. This was after I’d got over the initial crushing disappointment of it not being a pony – despite swearing I could hear its little hoofs clip-clopping into the house.

Bike riding can help fight the middle-aged spread.

But it’s been a long time since rides and I’m noticing the onset of marmalade – the middle-aged spread – around the trunk so on the bike it is.

Some people have been rightly incredulous about my failure to do any formal exercise at all.

“Surely you can find half an hour in your day?” they cry. “You don’t even have to go to the gym – you can do it at home!”

They’re right, of course. The internet, bless it, is chockers with dubious ideas for burning calories while doing domestic tasks.

Like bench-pressing baskets of wet washing; doing crunches with the baby perched on your tummy; and, my favourite, performing those invisible pelvic-floor squeezes with a secretive Mona Lisa smile on your face.

Loo lunges can really help with flexibility.

Naturally I’ve not done any of these but I’ve not been completely idle.

Here are some home exercises developed by me over the past 10 years (you’re welcome).

1. Eye rolls: Keep eyeballs supple by rolling whenever a child gives another cockamamie excuse for not following a simple request. Should add up to about 100 repetitions by day’s end. Struggling with the action? Consult a teenager for a visual guide.

2. Loo lunges: From a seated position, stretch those limbs as you reach across to the bathroom cabinet for a toilet roll because someone failed to replace the empty one. Again.

Build your core strength changing the sheets on the top bunk.

3. Toilet triceps: Tone the upper arm by pulling down the lavatory seat every time you go in after your son.

4. Bunkees: A gruelling core-strength exercise combining climbing, stretching, lifting and pulling as you attempt to change the sheets on the top bunk. Caution – known to break even the most extreme home athlete.

5. Towel toes: Pick up all the wet towels left scattered across the house, bending from the waist to touch the floor. Simultaneously work the diaphragm by shouting: “WHO LEFT THIS BLOODY TOWEL HERE?”

6. Squats: Unwittingly performed as you pick up Lego, fasten buttons and tie shoelaces. Safety tip – ditch the springing-up part as you risk knocking out your kid.

7. Crunches: Settle on the sofa with a packet of chips and turn on the … ha ha wait, how did that get in here?

Miranda Murphy is a mother of three and a journalist at The Australian.

Follow her on Twitter @murphymiranda