5 Tricks to Boost Your Workout Motivation

Home / Family / 5 Tricks to Boost Your Workout Motivation Get motivated by working up a sweat with a buddy!

You guys might remember how I recently hit up Gymagogo, an online workout that lets you take a live class in the comfort of your own living room? Well, I loved that once you sign up for a class, you get a reminder to actually attend said class—which totally helped keep me accountable and do it even when I wasn’t feeling it. Just a little trick that helped motivate me! For tips to help get you sweating, check out what Gymagogo founder and CEO Michael Mayers had to say about workout motivation over on Fit Bottomed Mamas recently…

Click here for his five ways to work out more! —Erin

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Who Needs a Workout With This Type of Activity?

As I mentioned last week, I’m kind of goal-less right now, and I’m okay with it. I’m working out, and I’m staying ridiculously active, so I’m letting myself off easy when I miss traditional workouts because my everyday life is filled with so much heavy lifting and movement. With summer and sunshine and feeling good has come way more activity on a daily basis. So much so that many days I get a workout simply by existing. And it’s not just running around after the kids, which is part of it. But just take a look at just a few of the things we’ve done within the last week.

Workout idea: Carry a small child through these nets at Sesame Place.

Big Bird Balancing Act. As Tish knows, a trip to an amusement park is a killer workout when you’ve got kids in tow. Heck, it’s work when it’s just you carrying yourself through the park all day. Add strollers and kids who want to be carried, and you instantly up the workout ante. We headed to Sesame Place recently with the kids, land of Elmo and Big Bird and Zoe, oh my. And while the park is by no means huge—a good thing for many reasons—it’s still some serious work. And then you take part in the attractions that are actually a workout, and boy are you feeling it.

Take Nets ‘N’ Climbs, for example (pictured above). Three stories of nets and ropes for climbing and frolicking above ground sounds like a blast, right? And it was. Only my 35+ pound daughter decided three feet in that she wasn’t a fan. So do I turn around and climb out? No. I pick her up and scale unstable ropes with her on my hip. Yes, I am insane. Another dad suffering the same plight as I was lost his daughter’s shoe mid-climb. Did I leave the shoe behind and tell him to fend for himself? No. I balanced my daughter on my hip, ropes swaying, while I reached down to retrieve the shoe and throw it up to him on the next section of rope. It was as good as any BOSU move I’ve ever done.

Once I managed to get to the top, we had a tunnel to get through. So we crawled our way through and my daughter decided to bravely climb down about 4 feet (of like hundreds), and let me haul her the rest of the way. I saw my husband below, looking up, asking if I was having fun. Funny enough, I was. Although I wouldn’t say it was by any means easy!

Rocking It. We’re adding decorative rocks to the side of our driveway to try to combat the weeds that love to do their best impression of a jungle on the side of our house. We bought 10 bags on our first trip to Home Depot. It wasn’t nearly enough, although I thought our car was going to bottom out. So I’ve been taking the kids on errands to pick up a few more bags of rocks at a time. On one trip, we got three. On another, we got four. Loading their awkward and heavy heft into the cart and then into the van and then out of the van and then spreading them around? (And that’s not even to mention loading and unloading the kids!) I feel like I’m in a Home Depot version of CrossFit or something.

My little dude throwing rocks. I also get to put all the misplaced rocks back after the kids throw them all over the place.

Central Park Zoo. Polar bear! Sea lions! Not wanting to walk a mile to get to the stroller-accessible ramps so carrying double stroller with my husband down stairs multiple times! Some people not wanting to get in said stroller but wanting to be carried! Hills! (At least there were no nets…) So fun, so not a relaxing Father’s Day for my hubs. But our workout was complete.

Splish Splash. We go to the pool. Dude. This may be the most exhausting of all of our endeavors. Firstly, I usually skip the stroller and carry my non-walking 25-pound kiddo into the gym and out to the pool. With all of the doors to be navigated and gear-schlepping and hand-holding, it probably takes us five minutes to get to our spot at the pool. This is five minutes of holding 25 pounds with one bicep. IT BURNS. I really need to switch sides, now that I think about it. Oh, and then? I’m crazy, and I take both kids on my hips out to the deeper end and walk around. Then my buns are burning. Probably more so because I drew a chalk “track” on the driveway earlier that day, which was several minutes of low squat-walking while drawing to complete the work of art.

So seriously, if you’re not motivated to work out? Do some ridiculous landscaping in your yard. Borrow some kids for a few hours and head to the pool or park. Draw some sidewalk art while squat-walking. Or go to Sesame Place and give kids piggyback rides on the nets. (Not really. That might be creepy.) You’ll realize that you don’t always have to hit the gym to get your muscles burning!

Do you consider your heavier duty daily activities a workout? Or does it only count if you go in with that purpose? —Erin

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Dr. Lisa Yoga Blast Workout DVD Review: More Like Fun Dance Blast!

Dance with Dr. Lisa!

If you’re like me (and, hey, it’s me FBG intern Maria again!), then sometimes working out can seem more like a chore than anything else—and chores are easy to procrastinate and put off. Getting in shape and being a healthier you is hard if you don’t have a workout routine that fits who you are. So figuring out what you really love to do and making it a workout is a great thing to discover. I have always loved to dance, and even though I know dancing is a sure-fire way to burn some calories, I never considered making it my own personal workout. That was until I tried Dr. Lisa Yoga Blast.

Dr. Lisa Yoga Blast is led by—you guessed it!—Dr. Lisa of The Doctors TV show and her trainer Elise Joan. The DVD consists of three great 20-minute workouts that focus on building strength, working on flexibility, and most importantly (to me that is!) some fun dance moves. Surprisingly, there’s not really that much yoga in any of them—or at least not as much as you’d expect with the words “Yoga Blast” in the title. At first I was wary of doing all three workouts—Cardio, Strength and Power Stretch—back to back, but once I was done with the first one, I had so much fun that I continued on and did the next two workouts!

Cardio focuses mostly on dance moves with a little yoga. In this section, you spend most of your time on your feet and moving, but a few times you get on the floor and do some standard downward facing dogs, as well as plank. Other than that, the entire Cardio workout is based on moves that Elise made fun for Dr. Lisa due to Lisa’s love of dancing. One of my favorite moves is the ballerina squat, where you stand and raise one leg then cross the raised leg behind the other (so your leg is about two to three feet past the other) and then put your hands together (using a claw-like grip to pull your two arms apart) and then squat. Cardio was easily my favorite part of the entire workout DVD. (Total surprise!)

In Strength, you do different kinds of barre-style moves with a few toning yoga poses. One of my favorite moves from the section was the deep lunge while holding on to a chair—while shaking your booty at the same time. Dr. Lisa mentioned that this move was an example of something you could do anytime, and she was right! Last night while I was cooking and waiting for the oven to preheat, I stood at my kitchen table and did some lunges that brought on a burn but didn’t leave me feeling like I needed to pass out.

In Power Stretch, Dr. Lisa and Elise use basic stretches and yoga moves to work your muscles and stretch your body in places you might not even know stretch! Power Stretch also has some fun hip-hop moves that get your heartbeat going without losing your breath. (Hallelujah!) And you spend a lot of time on your yoga mat, making sure that every muscle in your body gets the attention it deserves. At one point when we were on the ground in pigeon pose, I felt a pull in my middle back that I had never felt before! Shocking to say the least, but kind of fun trying to figure out if I had ever felt certain muscles stretch before. Even though Power Stretch was a great experience, it was probably my least favorite of the three sections—you’re just not as active in this section as the other ones.

With all the dancing, you would think the workout DVD would have some good jams to groove to, but unfortunately there is not much music in the DVD. For now, it was great because I could concentrate on the instruction, but I can see it becoming a bit of a boring problem once I did the DVD a few more times. An easy solution for this and, really, any other workout DVD? Find your favorite tunes to rock with and turn the volume on the TV down. It might take a while to find music that exactly fits the tempo of the workout, but that’s just more practice for you! (For fun ideas on what to play click here.)

Two days ago I went for a walk and the first thing I noticed was that my muscles didn’t start out with as much resistance as they had for the previous week. Sure, the name is a little misleading, but for this beginner who likes to dance, this was a great DVD that I will continue to mix into my new workout schedule. Cheers, Dr. Lisa!

FBG Rating (Out of 5)
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Fit Bottomed Line: If you’re a beginner looking for a workout DVD that emphasizes feeling stronger, becoming more flexible, being more energetic and dancing, then this is the workout for you.

I loved this workout DVD and plan to do it once a week while continuing my other exercise. What about you? Have you found a workout routine that fits who YOU are? —Maria

Tags: beginner, beginners, cardio, celebs, dance, dancing, Dr. Lisa, review, workout, workout DVD, yoga

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