I have been teaching various types of fitness for thirty years now. From teaching aerobics classes, low impact aerobics, step classes, prenatal and postnatal classes, body building, weight lifting, and personal training,  I have taken a whole new approach to my own personal workouts. You see your body really likes variety and muscle confusion is what keeps you progressing. Our bodies are such fine tuned engines that they eventually adapt to the demands that are placed on them and overcoming that adaptation is what is necessary to push through the plateaus. In the world of fitness, change is a good thing.  Exercise routines should just mean that you make time every day for something. Workouts should be anything but routine and I see it over and over in the gym. People find their comfort zones and do the same thing every day and wonder why they see no changes.

I have posted this video, not because I am promoting it as a workout but just to open your minds to the ways you can exercise without going to the gym, picking up a weight or going near a treadmill. It started with my interest in functional training and balance training and quite frankly, I was getting bored with the elliptical trainer, treadmill and weights. I started incorporating more squats, push-ups, lunges, planks, burpees, and variations on all of these in my workouts. I tried tabata training which is 20 second rounds of high intensity full body exercises followed by 10 seconds of recovery time. Full body exercises make sense because they are fundamental exercises which can be modified or made more difficult by simple adjustments. Pushing your own weight around can be very demanding. I spend much less time on each workout and have become more fit and have gained strength as well.

If you want to spice up your stale workout, start by adding a few full body weight exercises to your existing “routine”. Soon you can replace a few of your weight room workouts with combinations of body weight exercises. For a few ideas there are some good video posts on YouTube.  A few to try out are: TACFIT, Bodyrock. TV, Physique 57, or look up Tabata training.  Good Luck.  And by the way…..watch the whole video.  It gets pretty wild.

The Evolution of Body Weight Exercises (click here)