How to Make Exercise Easy and Fun

Did you make a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and get in shape? Are you in panic mode now that beach season is right around the corner? Have you stopped to consider that maybe the problem is your attitude toward exercise?

Lots of people think of exercise as endless hours on a treadmill or stair climber getting nowhere…or aerobics classes that make you feel like you’re going to die (and knowing you will die of embarrassment if someone you knew walked past just now and saw how ridiculous you looked trying to step-ball-change). But that’s only a very small sample of what exercise can look like.

Exercise can be much more fun and much more “organic”. All you need is a little creativity (and some rockin’ tunes).

Why Your Attitude Toward Exercise Matters

There are a number of benefits to adopting an exercise-positive attitude, such as:

You are more likely to stick to your exercise regimen

Guilt is not a good motivator. Neither is shame. Think about it: when you want to live life to the fullest, does that mean to the fullest measure of misery? No! You want to be happy, carefree and energetic. Weighty emotions like guilt and shame will just slow you down. But, when you like exercise and delight in the way your body moves, then you naturally want to do it more!

You can burn more calories

Years ago, some researchers did a study with some hotel housekeepers. Two groups were identified by their attitudes about exercise—those who considered their manual labor tasks exercise and those who didn’t. Then they monitored their metabolic performance. Although they performed the same tasks, the group who considered their work a workout burned more calories! Nothing was different but their attitude!

So, your attitude matters because it can make or break how successful you are in reaching your fitness goals.

Everyday Exercise Every Day

One way to improve your attitude toward exercise is to stop making it a chore in and of itself. Instead, it can be the way you get your everyday chores done.

On days when you just can’t get to the gym (or, perhaps instead of the gym altogether), you may make a workout of:

• Vacuuming—for added challenge, weight your vacuum or use resistance bands to increase the push-pull challenge
• Mopping—add some extra elbow grease by setting a minimum number of timed repetitions—say, 20 mop strokes to cover a 2’ x 2’ area in 15 seconds—before moving on to a new section
• Taking out the trash—add a brisk-paced lap around your neighborhood before going inside
• Gardening—you hardly need to add any challenge to make this a workout—stubborn weeds usually provide enough resistance
• Window washing—if you’ve got high windows, (carefully!) go up and down the ladder three times before stopping to actually clean the glass to a streak-free shine
• Laundry—there are tons of ways to turn doing laundry into a workout, like:
  • If you like to keep your basket manageable, then add weights to the bottom to increase lifting challenge. Just make sure to use proper form and lift with your legs!
  • If you’ve got stairs to tackle on your way to/from the washer and dryer, do two sets of stairs before actually tending to your loads
  • Once you’ve got everything folded, pace yourself when you put it back. Take one stack to its location, return to “folding central,” throw in a set of 5 pushups, then take another stack. Repeat until everything is put away.

These are examples from the most basic chores. Do you have other ideas? We’d love to hear them. Contact us to share, and we may post them to our blog or social media pages.

Making Your Workouts Funner

As you can see, there are lots of ways to make exercise part of the everyday work of life. But you can also turn work into play. To increase the fun-factor of any exercise, try:

Making it a game

You can be your own best competitor by making a game out of your workout routines. Set limits that push you to move faster, farther or more powerfully. For example, that laundry folding workout we told you about, see if you can get everything put away in under five minutes…or after establishing a baseline, see if you can beat your time to complete a lap around your neighborhood. When it starts to get too easy, increase reps.

Dancing

Anywhere you can walk, you can dance, so shake your booty, twirl and Lindy-hop your way across your house, to your car, into the grocery store…whatever.

Including a pal

Exercise is often more fun with company, and if you’re staying home, your workout pals can be your household companions—kids, dogs, cats, etc. Smaller (and cooperative) creatures may lend themselves as a lifting challenge. Others may dance with you to increase your fun. Maybe you can even teach Fido to race you.

Of course, traditional gym workouts can be lots of fun, too—especially when you have an energetic and motivating squad waiting for you, as you do at ICWA. Visit us for CrossFit, weightlifting and more!