Working out in the winter can be challenging.
After all, maybe you’ve missed your morning workout because you’ve spent the last 30 minutes clearing the overnight snow off your driveway.
Or you don’t want to make it to your usual gym or rec center for your usual workout because it’s just too stinkin’ cold outside.
That’s okay!
There are several options that can still give you a great workout in place of what you usually do.
Here are three of my favorites.
1. Use What You Have
You may already have some type of exercise equipment at home. It might be an exercise bike, a rower, or an elliptical.
Whatever you have can provide you an intense cardio workout, if you’d like.
Try this: For 30 minutes, sprint for 1 minute and then take it easy for 1 minute on whatever equipment (or lack thereof) you choose.
For example, if you have an exercise bike at home, sprint on that bike for 1:00 and then take 1:00 to pedal lightly.
I’ve done this with a rower, and let me tell you… it works!
In less than 45 minutes, I warmed up, did this circuit, and performed a post-workout cooldown. I burned 541 calories!
But what if you don’t have equipment? Don’t forget burpees! This full-body move will spike your heart rate and torch fat.
2. Shuffle The Deck Of Cards
This one is a doozy of a total-body workout.
I’d bet that you have a deck of cards at home somewhere. Here’s how you can use it to get an insanely hard workout at home.
- Pick four exercises (1 exercise per suit).
- Shuffle the deck and turn face down.
- Start the clock and draw your first card. Perform that exercise according to the number that’s on the card.
- Keep going until you’ve finished!
For example, if you pick lunges for hearts, and you draw a 9 of hearts, you’ll do 9 lunges.
The nice thing about this style of workout is you can make up the rules for each workout.
Say I chose lunges. I can either do 9 total lunges, or I might double the lunges to 18 so that each leg gets the same amount of work.
To keep myself focused on the workout and not numbers, I count face cards as 10 and aces as 11, just like in blackjack.
When you pick exercises, try to include movements that cover a range of movement patterns:
- Bend-and-lift movements (squatting)
- Single-leg movements (lunging)
- Pushing movements
- Pulling movements
- Rotational movements
If you’re feeling adventurous, keep the jokers in the deck and assign something wild to that wild card!
A tough workout I’ve done looks like this:
- Hearts – Russian twists
- Diamonds – Goblet squats with a dumbbell
- Spades – Pushups
- Clubs – Dumbbell snatch
- Joker – 1:00 plank
When I do the deck of cards, I can burn between 600-700 calories—with a warm-up and cool-down—in less than an hour.
Find household items to provide resistance if you don’t have dumbbells (i.e., use a gallon of milk or water for weight while you do lunges).
This type of workout is only limited by your creativity.
3. Get A Subscription
There are so many options for home workouts that I won’t even try to list them all here.
Technology has revolutionized the fitness world in that you can keep an entire fitness program in your pocket, ready to plug in to your TV, watch, or nearly any physical device.
Many subscription apps offer fitness programs, such as DDP Yoga (I admit I’m a little biased on this one).
Plus, we’re now seeing companies offer physical devices you can place in your home to accompany the subscription. Brands such as Mirror and Peloton both allow you to get unique workouts from the comfort of your home with the purchase of a device and a subscription.
Whatever home workout program you choose, you can make it as easy or as challenging as you’d like.
Getting stuck inside during winter doesn’t mean you have to miss your workout—use one of these three home workouts to get your body moving!
Photo by Jack Hamilton on Unsplash