When you make a New Year’s resolution to get more active, you may find it challenging to get moving when the winter weather is not the most motivational for outdoor activities. Moving workouts indoors may be a difficult transition but if you take time to plan more interesting workouts, it doesn’t have to be another blah winter.

Creative Cardio

The cold or snowy weather often makes outdoor exercise miserable, if not dangerous. If you’ve headed indoors and found yourself bored at the gym treadmill, there are ways to creatively shake-up your visits. When doing cardio, your main focus is getting your heart rate into your target heart rate zone. As long as you accomplish that, you can do anything you want. So consider leaving the boring 45-minutes on the treadmill behind on occasion and add variety and intensity and get your workout done in less time.

• Break up the workout – separate your workouts into 10-minute segments, each with a different focus – speed, incline, resistance, steady state, etc. By changing your workout every 10-minutes, you get variety because you’ve switched focus frequently which results in the workout flying by.
• Make a cardio medley – Instead of getting on the same machine every time, pick 3 different machines and workout on each one for 10 minutes or each time – treadmill, stairmaster, stepper, stationary bike, elliptical.
• Be creative – Instead of relying on machines, what are other indoor opportunities to get in some cardio (at the gym, at home or in the community). Look for a flight of stairs to run up and down or jump rope. These examples can be included as part of your cardio medley – balancing machine and non-machine workouts.
• Try something new – We all have machines that we tend to gravitate to every time that we go to the gym. Use the winter months to try a machine or two that you’ve never used before – rowing machine, swimming and the upper body ergonometer are more examples of equipment that can spice up your routine.
• Group Fitness classes – even if you are not prone to group exercise classes, joining a class during the winter can provide you with motivation to try something new. Take advantage of the social support and collective energy that makes group exercise classes so popular.

Cardio Workouts at Home

If you are a home exerciser, it may seem even harder to get in your workouts when you do not have access to all the machines found in a gym setting. However, you still have flexibility since you can use videos, go outside (conditions permitting), head to the mall for walking, and change the location of your workout – livingroom versus family room, for example.

Music is one way to motivate yourself so select upbeat music that you enjoy and that will encourage you to step up the pace of your workouts. Choose some basic cardio exercises such as jumping jacks, skipping, jogging in once place, side shuffles, etc. and do each one in a medley for 1-5 minutes each.

If you are watching TV, why not use this time to add exercise during commercial breaks – sit on a stability ball, walk up and down the stairs, use hand weights, do crunches to sneak exercise between breaks in your show. Or, use your treadmill (or other cardio equipment you may have at home) for the entire 30-minute or 60-minute program.

Workout Videos

Even if you are not a home exerciser, it’s a good idea to keep as stash of videos for those days you want something quick and easy. Videos are inexpensive and allow you to try a variety of exercises in the privacy of your own home. The more you can discourage your muscles from “anticipating” a routine workout, the harder they have to work and the greater the benefit you will receive from your workout efforts.

If you find your energy waning this winter, exercise may be the last thing you feel like doing. But, movement generates energy so now is the perfect time to get busy. Keep reminding yourself that spring isn’t very far away. Hang in there and keep moving!