Best Indoor Workouts for Dreary Winter Days

Even with your best effort and unceasing commitment to your workout schedule, during the winter months, exercising can be impossible. There can be ice, sub-freezing temperatures, sleet and more that combine to make it impossible for you to get outdoors. Thankfully, you can still get in a good workout, complete with your favorite workout pants or womens fitness apparel, even if you are relegated to the indoors. Here’s a few of the best indoor workouts you can adopt to get your through the winter:

Most Effective Indoor Workouts

Yoga

Yoga is one of the most physically challenging and effective workouts you can do and thankfully, can easily be practiced indoors. Combine your best sporty yoga pants with your favorite mat and complete some basic yoga flows to get your heart pumping and your blood circulating. There are plenty of free yoga classes online on sites such as YouTube. If you are familiar enough with the poses, though, you can make your own flow. Either way, practicing yoga is a great way to stay fit and complete a workout indoors.

Barre

When you think of a barre workout, you might think of delicate leg lifts and ballet-inspired poses. However, a barre workout is anything but gentle and easy. It is in fact, a physically challenging, body-sculpting exercise you can do from home. Just think of how fit professional dancers like ballerinas are and then consider that they do barre style exercises all the time. It’s a challenging workout to be sure. Barre effectively targets your core, boosts your balance and improves your cardiovascular endurance, and no, you don’t need a barre itself to do this workout. A counter or dining chair works just as well. Again, you can find many free barre workouts on sites, such as YouTube.

Pilates

There are variations of pilates, mainly two types. One utilizes studio equipment. The other, you can do virtually anywhere, even the comfort of home. You can find a variety of free pilate sequences online, there is even a pilates channel on YouTube. However, if you want to create your own routine, you can read the book “Return to Life Through Contrology,” by Joseph Pilates, which goes over the 34 classic movements that make up pilates.

Kickboxing

One type of at-home workout that is sure to get your heart pumping is kickboxing. Thankfully, you can easily do a kickboxing routine inside your home. There are many free options online to try, like the Tae Bo YouTube channel. Keep in mind, some of the workouts will recommend the use of a punching bag and/or mat, but you can modify kickboxing exercises to fit the equipment you have or to work without equipment if you don’t have any. Kickboxing promotes flexibility, balance, strength and cardiovascular health, using a combination of moves derived from taekwondo and boxing.

While the cooler temperatures and dreary weather associated with winter can force you to move your workout routine indoors, it doesn’t have to mean your exercise suffers. In fact, you can try a whole new type of workout or expand what you have been doing to challenge your body in a whole new way. The above are just a few suggestions our experts have compiled to get you started. Use them as inspiration and personalize them to better fit your individual fitness goals and needs.