A consistent workout routine is one of the hardest habits to maintain and the easiest to break. This can be especially true when doing your workout at home rather than attending a class at the gym. Making your workout fun will make you more likely to make it a permanent part of your routine. If you can turn your workout time into a fun time as well, it becomes easier to devote a portion of each day to it. The trick is finding which form of entertainment you most enjoy as you workout.
Find a Buddy or Class
The most common way to make your workout fun is to have an exercise partner or personal trainer do it with you. Having a friend who can share in the experience makes working out much more fun than doing it alone. If you enjoy getting to know new people or having fun with a group, consider attending a fitness class at your local gym or recreation center. Classes are always more fun because of the upbeat personality of the instructor, as well as the interaction with the other class members. From aerobics to cycling, in a gym or a pool, instructors know a way to make exercising fun for all.
Even if you’re not in a class, you can share a workout with a friend by going running or walking together. Not only is it more fun to work out with a partner, having a friend who relies on your and who you rely on makes both of you more consistent and accountable to each other as well.
TV and Movies
If you find it hard to get to the gym or prefer doing your workouts at home, there are ways to make them more fun, as well. If you are running or walking on a treadmill or doing an exercise on an elliptical or cycle machine, consider positioning it where you have access to TV and movie streaming. Having ready access to television programs, the news, or entertainment makes your exercise time seem to go faster and makes it much more enjoyable as well. When you find you have that much watch TV show you can’t get enough of – try coordinating that time with your workout, or better yet use your DVR and record the show to watch whenever you can fit in your workout.
In gyms across the country, you will find banks of television offering the latest in comedies, sporting events, and news channels for patrons to watch as they do strength training or cardio. At home, this can become a great motivator as well. If you find you enjoy a particular show and make the time to watch it every day, it is easy to coordinate a workout time that coincides. Not only will this allow you the time to watch your favorite show, but help you get in that workout as well.
Music
If you are on the move when working out, for instance, if you run or walk outdoors, consider music. Music completes a workout by setting the speed of the exercise based on the song tempo and makes any workout more fun. So, download your favorite playlist to your MP3 player, grab a great set of earbuds, and get on your way. You’ll find your workout will feel like it goes by faster and is much more enjoyable. Music serves as a great motivator that goes wherever you go.
Music with a beat helps you keep up your heart rate, progress more quickly, and enjoy the workout more. In every gymworkout class you attend, you’ll hear music playing in the background. This is because music is a movement motivator. Even at home, there are several ways to add music to your workout. If you are walking on a treadmill or working out on stationary equipment instead of a mobile device you might consider streaming music through the internet or from your satellite TV.
Audiobooks
Audiobooks help you read with your ears! Audiobook services like Audible and Librivox give you thousands of options to help you read during your workout. Strengthen your mind at the same time you work your body.
Pick a High Energy Workout
Let’s be honest, sometimes workouts are just boring, and there’s nothing we can do about it. However, several home workout programs are just as entertaining as they are effective in helping you with building strength and weight loss.
“Are you ready? I said, ‘ARE YOU READY?!’”
It sounds like a drill sergeant in the process of training the cadets, but it is more like the feeling you’ll get doing the Insanity Workout – a high intensity workout plan that lives up to its name in full. By the end of the first day, if you’re not crying, then your not trying. So, ARE YOU READY?
Most workouts focus on certain routines or diets. They come up with ways to hone in on muscle groups and toning with the most results possible in the shortest amount of time. One of the biggest examples of this is seen in interval training. A trainer makes the client work out for thirty seconds or so and then has them break for around three to four minutes, followed by a repeat in this effective workout. This goes on as long as possible until the person is exhausted or the timeframe ends.
As an alternative and almost contradiction to the common understanding that intervals need to be often and long, the Insanity Workout reverses the periods for workouts and rests. Yes, that is right. Rather than a short exercise with a long rest, this program gives you a long workout with a short rest. The method behind the madness is that it burns hard and fast and keeps those muscles pushing to the extreme. After all, muscles don’t rebuild stronger if they aren’t torn down first. So the Max Interval Training focuses on ripping them apart for quicker and stronger rebuilding.
Similar to other programs, like the P90X, with its diet and routines, this program also offers one additional incentive – no equipment. Yeah, that is right; no equipment required other than the body you start with. It is a series of movements that focus entirely on what you have available in the confines of your home and front of your television set. Lunges, pushups, sit-ups, crunches, and more will all come into play as you react to the movements on the screen and focus all your energy into staying in motion until those blessed thirty seconds of relief that only come once every three to four minutes.
Another advantage this program has over other ones, including P90X, is that the time involved is shortened. We aren’t talking six months, or five or even three (which is the number for P90X), but a mere 60 days. That is staggering no matter who you are. In sixty days, this program will take you from pathetically sculpted to dream body, and all it requires is you to move fast and hard. Its routines vary during the week to balance out the muscles targeting and avoid the standard plateau of muscle development.
After doing the Insanity Workout, you come away not only with a fabulous body, but a feeling of accomplishment and amazement at your abilities. Very few people invest the time and means to bring their body into this much shape, and you’ll be proud to show you are one of them. So, again, ARE YOU READY?