Make Time – and Space – for Workouts

Create a Home Gym
Cold weather and short days make it harder to exercise outdoors in the winter. For those times when it’s too wet, too cold or just too dark to work out outdoors, why not retreat to your own home gym? For a minimal investment, you can transform a small area of your home into an exercise space with many of the exercise benefits of a commercial gym.

Pick the Spot
The first step is to identify a place in your home where you won’t be distracted. The area should be large enough that you can stretch out in all directions without touching anything. If you have slippery floors, you may want to use a yoga mat to work out on. It may be helpful to have a flight of stairs nearby.
Warm up your new gym’s surroundings by hanging up a travel poster of a favorite sun-drenched beach or surf break.

What Will You Do in Your New Gym?
An exercise plan should cover the three main components of physical fitness: cardiovascular, strength training and flexibility.

Cardiovascular
Cardiovascular exercise is an important part of your fitness program. Getting your blood pumping is vital to improving heart and lung function and plays a critical role in weight management. Exercise bikes can be a great way to get cardiovascular exercise at home. While a new one is costly, it is possible to get bargains on used bikes through Craigslist. A local gym may sell them, as well. Another home option for your cardio workout is to work out along with a video. Choose from workout videos that target your abs, arms, back or thighs, or go for a total-body workout video. Or you can keep it simple by doing jumping jacks or step-ups at the bottom of a flight of stairs.

Strength Training
You have a range of options for creating a strength-training routine in your home. A lot of exercises can be performed without any equipment, such as push-ups, body-weight squats and more. If you want to get more out of your home strength exercises, you can purchase equipment to use as resistance. Barbell weights are compact enough to be used in the smallest home gym and can be used in a variety of ways to boost your strength exercises. Elastic resistance bands take up almost no space, and with a little creativity you can duplicate almost any exercise you’d normally do with free weights.

Flexibility Training
This is an easy one. Flexibility routines from simple stretching to tai chi or yoga can be done almost anywhere. Flexibility training keeps us limber, increases circulation and improves the functionality of our muscles and joints. Poke around on YouTube to find some flexibility exercises you like.

Kids, Too!
Don’t exclude the kids from your home gym workouts! Getting children to exercise at home can be challenging. Make exercise a family affair by adding some kid-friendly gear to your home gym’s equipment bin such as a jump rope, hula hoop or exercise ball. Latin or African dance videos are fun motivators, too. A small, individual trampoline is probably the surest way to get your kid jumping!

Why not motivate children to exercise with a reward program? If he or she engages in 60 minutes of physical activity daily over a set period, offer a meaningful reward. Examples include tickets to a movie or concert or to an afternoon at a skating rink or an indoor water park. A larger goal might be a day spent skiing or snowboarding. Keep a regular log of your child’s physical activity. Update it two or three times a week so you both can keep track of progress.

Drink Up!
Just because it’s cold doesn’t mean you can skip hydration. You’re less likely to notice that you are dehydrated when it’s cold, so take extra care to drink water before and after working out.