Exercise At Home: Wild And Novel Ideas That Are Anything But Boring!

After a year of lockdowns, most of us have got pretty used to working out at home. The thing is, home workouts can get a bit boring from time to time. After all, you just don’t get that interactive motivation you do when you are working out with a room full of people.

However, after a little digging, we’ve discovered that there are some quite novel and exciting ways of working out at home. Options that will definitely keep you motivated, and are anything but boring. Keep reading to find out what they are, but brace yourself and hold onto your hat because some of these are wild! 

Ring Fit Adventure

Exercising with a computer game isn’t a new idea by any means. After all, the Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution have been around for ages! However, Nintendo’s latest offering the Ring Fit Adventure for the SWITCH is seriously fun and a great workout at the same time. 

The game isn’t just about following along with the tutorials on screen either. Instead the exercise you do translate directly into power-ups and so impacts how effective your character is at working their way through the story. Indeed, the whole premise of the workout is that it’s based on an RPG, a hugely popular game type. 

To play the game you need to also purchase the ring, as this is where the joy-cons (SWITCH controllers are fitted). Using the ring is easy and intuitive, and the great thing is it can be used for a range of different moves which means you can get a decent all-over workout. 

The game shows you the proper way of completing the moves too (form) and it encourages a good balance of push and balance that will suit even beginner exercisers well. You don’t need much space to play it in either, and it’s much more engaging than something like a dance DVD, especially if gaming and RPGs are already your jam! 

Laughter Yoga

If you are looking for something that is unbelievably simple, but also waaaaaay outside the box, look no further than Laughter Yoga. This is an exercise practice that combines yogic breathing with different types of laughter and supporters suggest that just 10-15 mins of laughing are comparable to around 30 minutes of cardio! 

Of course, laughing to yourself can seem a little weird at first. Although the good thing is that it’s OK to laugh at the practice, as well as along with it. This is because proppants say that the effects of laughter on the brain and body are the same no matter the reasons for it, and even if it starts off fake. 

Indeed, this is the very essence of laughing yoga practice, as everyone begins faking it to start and then the body takes over and it becomes more authentic as you go along. What this means is you don’t need any comedy or other stimulus to begin laughing. You just do it! 

While laughing yoga is a pretty simple practice, it’s a good idea to get a book or watch a tutorial like the one below to make sure you have the basics down. This is because the way you breathe whilst practicing will have an impact on how effective it is. 

It’s also worth pointing out that, for the first few sessions at least, you may want to find a solitary spot in the house to practice or wait until everyone else is out. Just until you get used to laughing out loud in this way. 

Practice Your Baseball Swing 

As anyone in the professional leagues will tell you, you have to be a real athlete to successfully and consistently swing a baseball bat. Indeed, practicing your baseball swing can provide you with an entire body workout. After all, you use your arms, legs, torso, hips, and abdominal muscles each, and every time. 

Indeed, with a more detailed breakdown of a baseball swing, we can see that in particular, it engages the oblique muscles on one side as you move the back and rotate, and then the obliques on the other side hit the ball. 

Of course, most people think that practicing their baseball swing is something they can’t do at home. After all, you wouldn’t want to lose control of your ball or bat, and risk breaking a window or causing damage to your property!

However this is no longer the case, the reason is that you can now buy your very own batting cages to go in your yard. Such cages can even be put up and taken down in under an hour, something that means you can practice your swing in the morning and still have full use of your yard in the afternoon. 

Trampoline Workout 

Another great option for a job that is not boring is to use a trampoline. The idea here is that the resistance that the trampoline provides makes your workout far more effective. Indeed, experts suggest that trampolining for 30 mins is over 50% more effective than a jog of the same length of time! 

It’s hardly surprising that trampolining is such a great form of exercise though, as even NASA agrees it’s one of the most effective workouts around. In particular, you can expect improvements in core strength, circulation, coordination, balance, and cardiovascular fitness when choosing a trampoline exercise routine. 

However, the benefits above are not the only ones associated with this form of exercise. Indeed, trampolining is also an excellent way to support your body’s lymphatic drainage system. This is because the body needs up-down movements for these systems to work efficiently, and trampolining will help you to alternate between double gravity, and weightlessness. 

Additionally, because of the additional resistance, trampolining is very good for improving bone density. Something that many people can benefit from as they age. Last, of all, trampolining is also a lot of fun and can provide you with just enough motivation to get exercising when you feel like you are in a rut. 

Deck of Cards Workout 

It’s not so much the moves of this workout that make it novel, but the method of choosing which to do and how many to perform. Yep you’ve guessed it you use a deck of cards to tell you what activity you will do, and how many reps to complete. This method is so effective because it can add variety to even the most regular workout. After all, there are so many combinations that can occur. 

It’s super simple to use as well, you just pick four types of exercises and match them with the four different suits. These exercises can be all resistance, or all cardio, or a mix of both. It’s totally up to you! For example : 

• Hearts: Jog on the spot
• Diamonds: jumping jacks
• Spades: Squats
• Clubs: Burpees

Then you shuffle the cards and pick your first one. Look at the suit for the activity, and the number for how many times you need to do it. E.g if you pick the 9 of diamonds you would need to do 9 jumping jacks. 

Be sure to decide what Kings, Queens, Jacks, and Aces are before you start though, otherwise you could be tempted to not quite push yourself as far as you can go. 

The great thing about the deck of cards workout is that you don’t need any additional equipment, as most people have a set of cards around the home. You can also change the activities each day to make sure you are getting the best and most rounded workout possible, with no chance of getting bored at all.