Ideas for Switching Up Your Exercise At Home For Max Benefits

Yet another blast of fridged air has pushed you to the treadmill or a crying baby is keeping you on your toes with an indoor ride. You’re a champ, you’ll get it done, but you could make it more fun!

They say it’s important to keep the romance alive and I’m sure someone is talking about roses and soft music, but after 16 years of running I know it applies to our sweat sessions too.

I’ve never hidden my love for treadmill running and exercise at home, but admittedly I’m REALLLY craving some time outside (see how I’m semi-getting it with Kinomap in idea 2!).

But this year was a little different. Coming off surgery, I wasn’t able to move as freely for awhile and then I was honestly scared to run without good visibility in the dark, then I was nervous about the snow or ice…so my outdoor runs have been FAR less than previous years.

Time to revamp the at home workouts not just for maximum results, but to ensure that we continue to enjoy it!!

Ideas for Working Out at Home

We all know once it starts to feel like a chore, we’re less likely to show up and put in the work. Even if exercising at home means we only need to roll to the next room to make it happen, we find a way not to. Let’s put the kabash on that and start to see results and mix up our at home workouts for more fun.

Idea #1: Groups Plans

Just because you’re saving time and money by exercising at home, doesn’t mean you have to forgo the amazing community that surrounds running and fitness in general! You can use an app like Kinomap to challenge yourself by trying to better someone else’s time on a particular run.

Or if cross training is where you struggle, time to join one of the amazing group workouts. Checkout Madeline Moves and Danielle Pascente on Instagram, both ladies post workouts in their feed, but also host group online programs all the time. You can see from the others following along that they get an amazing amount of support and motivation by following each other!

Idea #2: Change Your View

Let me introduce you to the tool that probably saved my treadmill runs the last few weeks. Kinomap.

Instead of staring at the same wall for hours on end, it’s time to take a mini vacation with every workout. Here’s how it works:

1. Open the Kinomap app
2. Pick your workout – run, ride, row
3. Pick a path you’d like to follow
4. Click start and you can run along to a video of a new place, see it on a Google map and adjust your treadmill to match the elevation changes

I’ve already got wanderlust, but running while looking at gorgeous French Cathedrals and even being part of a race totally gave me an extra boost! I’m on the treadmill, but hey someone is cheering for me!! A great opportunity to get in that race mindset or to find out what a course if like if you’ve been considering a great racecation.

When you’re feeling a little more competitive, look for one of the scheduled events. You can run a course at the same time as another user, which is a bit like when someone hops on the treadmill next to you. Suddenly, you can’t help yourself, you’re pushing just a little bit harder! As someone who has been doing a LOT more biking over the last year due to my knee, this is a game changer.

I’m tired of sitting on my little stationary bike due to the ice, so this makes me feel like I’m riding the Tour De France…um just much slower and way easier.

Other cool features:

• you can upload your own videos! Once you’re back outside on a favorite trail or part of say the Boston marathon course, why not share it with those of us looking to try those paths!
• Connect with your Strava or MyFitnessPal account to sync data
• Future Kinommap.tv will allow you to watch a video and have it control your smart trainer
• Huge library of videos from both elite and amateurs
• Can connect to a variety of Bluetooth and ANT+ sensors

Cost: The app is free and comes with a quite few workouts you can test out to see how much fun it is. After that it’s either $7.99/month or $59 for the year. Far less than a gym membership!

Idea #3: Mix it Up

Just because you can run 10 miles on the treadmill doesn’t mean that has to be your only workout, though it’s an important part of your race training.

One of the best ways to keep things going is to completely throw the rules out the window and combine your run with your strength traning. Not only are you going to make your workout more interesting, but there is now data showing that doing your workouts as a combination of strength and cardio can actually increase fat burning more than doing them separately or one after the other.

From this study, the group that mixed the cardio and weights experienced:

• 35% greater improvement in lower body strength
• 53% greater improvement in lower body endurance
• 28% greater improvement in lower body flexibility
• 144% greater improvement in upper body flexibility
• 82% greater improvement in muscle gains,
• 991% greater loss in fat

Here’s a workout idea to get you started:

Good to remember that while this might burn more fat, that doesn’t mean it’s best to do it all the time. If your goal is to run a marathon, but all your training sessions involve breaking up the run, you’ll definitely regret that come race day.

Idea #4: N.E.A.T.

Stop thinking of “workouts” as the only way you get fitter. Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) can be your major calorie burn on nearly any day! Once I started thinking that way, I was less resistant to taking out the trash…maybe 365 days of that burns off a cookie, ha!

Some NEAT ideas for you that can crank up your metabolism consistently:

• Vacuum, clean
• Turn on the radio and dance
• Play with the kids
• Wii games (or whatever the latest interactive system is…I’m so out of this world)
• Walk around the neighborhood, actually play at the park (can you still do the monkey bars, it’s way harder!)
• Creating a standing desk

How do you change you your at home exercise?

Have you ever tried running to a video?

Other ways to connect with Amanda

Instagram for ongoing motivation: RunToTheFinish

Facebook for all the chatter: RunToTheFinish

Pinterest for  more running tips: RunToTheFinish

 

This post is sponsored by Kinomap, all thoughts and opinions are my own.