It occurred to me that I should really start using TV watching, game playing, and computer time to interject a few fitness moves. My husband and I have actually started doing this, and it really helps you to stay motivated. It also helps you to not feel like such a couch potato!

For example, we were watching an hour long show that we watch every week. During a more boring part of the show, he and I hit the floor and did 100 crunches.  It broke up the monotony of sitting still for an hour, and I felt like I was actually accomplishing something instead of sitting idle for an hour.

You don’t just have to do it while watching TV though. You can make use of your “down time” and interject some fitness moves whether you are watching television, internet surfing, working on a project where you have to sit, or playing online games like poker or Texas Holdem!

Good moves to slip in are things like crunches, push ups, lunges, leg lifts, jumping jacks and any other simple and easily modified move where you don’t need a whole lot of space to move around.

Try doing something like 5 sets of ten starting off, then work your way up.  We started off a bit ambitious with 100 crunches, but you could always start with 40-50 and work your way up!

My sister is a Capoeia enthusiast. She also happens to be in a lot better shape than me.  This, combined with the fact that I am not used to moving in the unique ways that this demanding sport/martial art/performance art pastime demands, made me one sore puppy a couple days after I attempted it with my sister in a class.

She came to visit me here in Ohio. The last time we went together was about a year ago. She has since gotten a lot better at this art, and I was impressed at watching her play/spar with some of the kids and the instructor. It can be very intimidating at first, especially for someone like me who is more of an introvert by nature.

Capoiera is a sport that is part martial art and self defense and part creative expression/dance. It’s hard to explain it until you actually see it in practice. You and your partner really have to trust eachother, and there can be a lot of physical contact between the two of you, but no one should get hurt unless thee is some misread body signs – which inevitably happens.

Capoiera involves a lot of roundhouse sort of kicks, so it requires a lot of lower body strength, but I feel it requires even more upper body strength. We practiced at a local gym for about an hour and a half, and not only was I dripping with sweat, but I was also worn out and my muscles were extremely sore the next day and for the next few days after that.

There are a lot of movements in Capoeira that almost seemed counterintuitive to me. One example was where I stood toe to toe with the instructor, but we were facing away from eachother. We were supposed to turn and kick over eachothers body over and over again, regaining our footing each time. It felt like I should have been kicking forward, but really I needed to be kicking back.

This sport is really fun, but extremely demanding of the body. It is also demanding of time if you get into it seriously and want to get really good.  I have to say, it’s really impressive to look at, and very fun to practice here and there, but in the end, the sport is actually a little too demanding on the body for me.  It’s great to get you in shape fast though.

When it comes to playing sports, I’m the first to admit, I pretty much suck at anything that requires a whole of of hand eye coordination.  If you take me to play tennis, you’d probably be winning even if you’re just a mediocre player.

I can run allover the court all day, but when it comes to making contact with any ball in any sport, I’m pretty terrible. But that’s not what playing sports is really all about. It’s not about winning and competition all the time, but to me, even trying to play sports is fun and it also has a lot of benefits for my fitness.

One of the best calorie burners is tennis. Tennis is a game where you are running allover the court the whole time, and this is where the exercise comes in. You may not be hitting the ball all the time, but just running sideways takes a lot of coordination, and you are focusing the whole time.

Another sport that involves a court and a ball that is excellent for your cardiovascular fitness is basketball. Basketball players notoriously have some of the best physical conditioning when it comes to cardio fitness in the world.

If you look, you’ll also notice that they are almost constantly sweating, which means they are always exerting themselves.  They are running the ball up and down the court, playing defense and offense, and since it is such a high scoring game (unlike football), the game goes on forever, and many of the players stay on the court the majority of the time.

Basketball players can probably eat pretty much what they want because they literally burn calories the whole time they are on the court.  Another great sport is swimming. Although this could also be categorized in the pleasure category, swimming is a tough sport.

It conditions the muscles without you even feeling it, because you are weightless in water.  It also conditions your lungs and gives you compact, sleek muscles.

My husband and I decided to shake things up today in our fitness routine, and instead of doing something inside, we wanted to go hiking on a new trail that we found by our house. It’s a little part that we always thought was little more than a soccer and football field for the local kids games. 

Boy, were we wrong! We got there and started our hike, and found that the trails were graded very steeply in many places, and it was really cool because some spots were so high that they gave you a birds eye view of the deep ravines and gullys that made the woods and the scaping so gorgeous. It was a scenic treat as well as a physical workout that we really enjoyed.

One thing that I love about getting exercise outdoors is that it really doesn’t feel like mechanical, necessary “routine” workouts. Instead, you emerge from a hike or a scenic run with with a different sense of calm and wonder from seeing all the green grass, pastures, and flowery scenery that you get to see in the spring and summer.

When we came back from our hike, we felt a renewed appreciation for nature, and we were both much more calm and relaxed and less “go go go”. We more so wanted to enjoy our day (it’s the weekend) than beat ourselves up about what were WEREN’T going to accomplish during the precious short weekend.

When we returned from our hike, we were still energized and wanted to still spend as much time outdoors as we could since it’s been a nonstop rainstorm here for the past few days. So, we ended up running out and  buying a small flowering tree, which we planted in our yard.  One thing led to another, and before you knew it, we were out there getting all kinds of things done that I’d been meaning to do out in the yard.

So needless to say, we got our calorie burning in today! We were out and about, running around, doing hard yardwork and enjoying the great, beautiful outdoors all day. It’s exhilerating – not routine!

It’s so funny to think that two sports that I always dreaded having to play as a kid, because it usually meant being humiliated due to the competitive nature of gym class and also because I had almost zero athletic skills and hand eye coordination as a kid, are two of the best summer sports to play at parties. Not only are they fun to play when you’re putting a few beers back at summer parties, but they also happen to be great sports for burning calories in the summer heat.

You do a lot of running back and forth in both of these games, and that’s where you get the majority of your workout done. It’s not so much hitting the volley ball or the birdie with your racket that works your body out, but it’s like basketball, you’re constantly running back and forth chasing the ball.

The last time I played volley ball, it was pretty hot outside, and I was really out of breath at the end of the game, and sweating a lot to boot. It’s a great way to brush up on your hand eye coordination and keep your mind sharp because your mind has to be “on” the whole time.

A badminton set with two rackets and two birdies will cost you only about five bucks at Wal-Mart. And, if you’ve already got a net, then all you need are the birdies and the rackets. And then, of course if you have a net, you just need to buy the volleyball to play a couple different sports at once.

Both games are really fun, and just about anyone can do them. They get you moving, and they’re a great conversation piece afterwards, so you’re not all just sitting around like bumps on a log instead of engaging in physical activity.

Make sure you wear good tennis shoes, because if you don’t, you’re feet will slip and slide all over, especially if you’re wearing flip flops, which is the mistake I made a couple weeks ago, I was slipping and sliding all over.I’m lucky I didn’t blow my ankle out!

I hate to harp so much on my newfound interest and joy in a sport that I used to do as a child with my grandfather and my little sister and my mom so often – ice skating. I know that there’s a lot of hype built around the sport now too because of the winter Olympic games and the still highly spectated sport of figure skating – which I still enjoy watching on tv immensely, I suppose it’s somewhat like a trip down memory lane for me to my younger days.

Definitely very sentimental and nostalgic thing for me, we used to watch it together as a family, and I guess it’s a very fond memory I have of our family actually having fun together times as a younger girl, before my parents got divorced when I was sixteen, so it definitely holds a special place in my heart. My mom, sister and I went when my sister was in town from California at an ice arena around where I grew up, and I had a blast.

Although I was really shaky and unsure of myself at the outset because I hadn’t been ice skating in several years, I quickly became reacqainted with the sport, and was whizzing by beginners in no time, enjoying feeling the cold breeze on my face and the feeling that I was gliding through the air.

My husband and I decided to go again, together, since after my sister mom and I went, he was anxious to get back out on the ice after a long hiatus from it. He had taken skating in college, and he hadn’t been ice skating in years either, so after we went, he said he’d like to go. We ended up going to the college ice arena, and we also had a ball.

It was PACKED though. Here in Ohio, we actually had a nice day with the sun out, which has been a rarity over the past few weeks with us getting hammered with snow nonstop, so people were out in full force, and I’m sure that the buzz about ice skating from the winter Olympics were definitely contributing to the popularity of the sport.

We had a few falls – well, mostly my husband did because he didn’t have the benefit of having just been skating like I did, and he ended up with a big knot on his knee from taking a nasty spill, but we both had fun and got a great workout, and worked muscles we’d forgotten we had. It was a really great, active bonding experience!