I 100% second this and it's helped me lots. My favorite sport is only accessible to me in the summer and I hate starting from ground 0 ever year-- so I started doing exactly this and suddenly it's so much easier to pick it up again every year! Also, when it comes to wellness, consistent daily (or near-daily) exercise is much more valuable for your health overall than extreme fitness challenges or sudden all-or-nothing fitness goals.
I'd like to add some other options for anyone lacking ideas:
Run up and down some stairs a few times in a row. This one's great when you've been sitting for a few hours, get the restless nyoomies before bedtime (you know when you lay down exhausted to go to sleep and then suddenly feel like you can run a mile? Not if your legs are jelly!), or even just need to make a trip to a different floor of your home/school/work. Take multiple trips to do a task if you don't want to feel awkward about it.
A lighter version of this is just hopping in place.
OP already mentioned jogging in place but you can also do knee raises or butt kicks if you'd like to change it up a little bit!
Ankle/calf raises. I cannot stress enough how beautifully amazing this simple exercise is. You can do this one anywhere you need to stand up for a bit, not just at home but even waiting in line at a store or at a bus/train stop. Sure, you'll look a little restless but nobody's going to think twice about it or remember it for more than 30 seconds. Bonus points if you have a raised floor somewhere at home (like a stair or chess board or footstool) that lets you bring your ankle lower than your toes, but either way this one's gonna help you build killer ankles that are way less prone to injury AND strengthening these muscles will make days where you spend more time on your feet much, MUCH less exhausting.
Drop and hold a deep squat while you're doing something simple with your hands (like taping something together, sorting through mail, folding laundry, etc.)
Wall and/or bench pushups. There's walls everywhere. They're great as exercise equipment! There's also sturdy furniture and/or fixtures everywhere. They're also great as exercise equipment! And they're conveniently available nearby when you've got to stand around and wait for something (like toast to pop) or someone (like that one person you're waiting to finish getting ready so you can go out). And if you can do a full set of the regular kind of pushups no problem, I have some great news for you: there is floor. Everywhere. So much floor!! :D
Same wall accessibility applies to wall sits. Also if you have bad knees and regular squats hurt, wall squats are a lighter variation of those.
Other floor (or couch, or bed) exercises you can do at the drop of a hat include (in order of easiest to hardest in my own experience but everyone's will be different) leg raises, mountain climbers, hip raises, bicycle crunches, crunches, starfish crunches, starfish planks (no idea if that's what they're actually called but it's pretty much a plank but only one side of your body at a time with your body turned so your other hand can point straight up in the air), sit ups, and burpees.
Go for a walk. It doesn't have to be a long walk; you don't even have to even leave your house. Just walk around for a little while. Smell the roses. Go check out the pretty sunset. Count how many steps it take you to get from one room to the next.
This one goes along with walking but doing many household chores involves moving around. Dust the surfaces. Vacuum. Sweep. Offer the dead window fly to your friendly bathroom spider. Water the plants. Teach the dog some tricks. If you need a movement break or a reason to stop doomscrolling for lack of something better to do, these are all great options!
At the end of the day, something is almost always better than nothing and you can adjust what exercises you do (and how often/for how long) to your own goals (such as mental wellness, decreasing joint pain, and injury prevention vs. building muscle). You can choose to do any of these until your muscles burn or just until the pot of pasta on the stove is done boiling. Just listen to your body (stop or do a lighter variation if it's too painful/gives the wrong kind of pain, keep going if it feels good), use common sense (i.e. the deep squat one is probably a bad idea for someone with low iron or POTS), and learn to enjoy moving just for the sake of moving again. <3
And if you're reading this and haven't stood up in the past two or more hours, this is your sign to get up, go get a drink of water, and pick one of these to do along the way.
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