For your New Year’s resolution, you decide to start working out. You get a gym membership. For the first couple months, it’s great, but eventually you start to get bored of the same old routine, running on the treadmill, using the machines. While lots of people enjoy classic running and strength training a lot of us find that kind of exercise just flat-out dull. Fortunately, there are all kinds of ways to make working out so fun that you’ll forget you’re exercising at all!
#1 Dance!
Dancing is tons of fun, and you can burn anywhere from 300 to 400 calories in an hour! Lots of local dance studios offer classes for adults, so you could try tap, ballroom, salsa, swing, or even ballet! If a full-on training class is a little intimidating for you, see if there’s a local gym that offers Zumba or Jazzercise, which are less focused on technique and more on having fun and getting some good cardio in.
#2 Play like a kid
Have you ever envied how little kids can run around all day without stopping? How can you blame them, when they’re just doing it for fun! Unleash your inner kid by climbing trees, going to a playground and getting on the swings or jungle gym, or investing in a mini-trampoline that you can fit right in your living room! If you babysit or have kids, get involved in their games. Before you know it, playing hide-and-seek, tag, or even imagination games will get your heart rate going and help limber you up (come on, climbing trees requires flexibility!).
#3 Get outside
Walking or jogging on a treadmill day after day can make you feel like a hamster in a wheel. Get yourself outside. See if you can find a local walking trail, or a pretty neighborhood, or a lakeside walk. Vary your scenery each day, and try people-watching! You might also try hiking, biking, camping, or skiing to take yourself on a real adventure.
#4 Use a fitness app
There are hundreds of apps out there that are targeted to help make exercising more fun. There are great nutrition and health trackers that can help you set goals for yourself and track your progress, either via a tracker such as a Fitbit or by manual entry. Other apps offer short daily workouts that are easy to fit in a daily schedule. There’s even a running app that simulates a zombie chase!
#5 Challenge yourself
If you enjoy working out in the traditional sense but just feel stuck in the same routine, try setting yourself some truly challenging goals. There are tons of expert websites out there that can help you design a new routine to get yourself into peak shape. Imagine you’re a pro athlete training for a competition–and who knows, maybe one day you will be!