
Once the wheels of motivation fall off and you start to plateau, you’ll probably feel like 90% of the people that go to the gym do: get bored. It’s just a fact of life – something you do repeatedly for a long time can get rote, tiresome, and just plain repetitive.
Or maybe it’s the whole routine of packing up, going to the gym, rubbing elbows with your gym buddies, talking about the same stuff day in and day out that tires you out. Whatever the reason is, sometimes, you just need a break from the usual routine to keep things interesting. And the temptation to just ditch exercise altogether is real when the routine goes stale.
After all, you might not be too interested in performing a high-intensity workout anymore. Maybe the same 36 yoga poses that you’ve been doing the past 5 years has just gotten monotonous and stale, and exercise has become a chore you’d rather not have the displeasure of doing.
Getting bored with your workouts doesn’t have to mean you need to quit it. All you probably need is to reassess your current routine and switch the boring things with a workout that you don’t notice you did until after you’ve finished doing it.
See, the benefits of exercise have been well-documented to improve our collective health. It doesn’t just lessen the risk of contracting heart disease and burn off body fat – it also improves your mood, boosts your confidence, and do wonders for your self-esteem.
Exercising is a discipline that transcends each area of your life. And it’s as simple as just doing it. It’s either you do it or you don’t.
Whether you’re a beginner or a total gym rat, you might want to change your routine up to include fun activities that hardly feel like your routine of exercise.
And the only way to find out is to try various activities to replace the workouts that have started to bore you. We’ve got 8 suggestions you can use in a pinch.
1. Dance
If you’ve always wanted to channel your inner Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers (or any celebrity who has slick dance moves), you might want to consider taking a dance class. Plenty of gyms and studios offer a wide array of dance classes, which enable you to unleash your creativity on the dance floor while burning tons calories. You might just like it so much that you won’t realize how much time you’ve spent exercising.
2. Climb a flight of stairs
If your house or apartment contains a flight of stairs, congratulations – you’ve just found yourself an exercise machine you can use at any time. Running and/or walking down and up the stairs gives you a fantastic cardio workout with the bonus of improving your lower body. And there’s plenty of stairs you can climb anywhere, especially in museums: channel your inner Rocky Balboa and get to stepping!
3. Jump the trampoline
Jumping up and down on a trampoline is guaranteed fun…but it’s also a fabulous fat burning exercise. Research has shown that 10 minutes of jumping on a trampoline can match the benefits of running for over 30 minutes. Plus, you can easily incorporate exercises designed for trampolines easily for devastatingly effective calorie-burning properties. All you need is a trampoline that you can do high jumps on (we recommend Acon for high jumps) to unlock the health benefits of trampoline jumping.
4. Learn juggling (seriously!)
What if we told you that you COULD burn a ton of calories while doing a conversation-starting party trick? Well, that’s juggling for you. Juggling boosts hand-eye coordination, reduces anxiety and stress, and gives your core muscles a much-needed boost. The best part? Juggling hardly feels like a typical exercise at all.
5. Do a boot camp
Boot camps aren’t a novel activity (and neither is it necessarily consider it remotely fun for most), but more and more boot camps have upped their game from the typical Army routine, and taking it to the city streets. You could very well have the Golden Gate Bridge as your backdrop and burn copious amounts of fat and calories while you duke it out with your fellow boot campers. But hey, if doing an Army boot camp is your idea of fun, we won’t stop you from doing so. You do you!
6. Get fit at the comfort of your home (with a laptop!)
For those of you who see going to the gym as a monotonous grind that you’d rather not have to deal with, there are plenty of options out there – like doing your desired workout from the comfort of your laptop screen. There are countless instructional videos where you can do anything from HIIT, all sorts of yoga, CrossFit, and/or pretty much anything from that matter available at your fingertips. You don’t even have to pay a single cent, too – there are more fitness instructional videos on YouTube than you can shake a stick at, and they’re REALLY good.
7. Go out and take a hike
If you’re the outdoorsy type, then nothing should get you hyped up as much as hiking does – it’s a great, low-intensity, yet fantastic cardio exercise with the bonus of seeing lakes, forests, landscapes, and wildlife – as well as getting a whole lot of fresh air. Never underestimate the benefits of a good hike in the woods – it’s 100 times better than doing the old hat at the gym. Trust us.