Winter training season—otherwise known as “Oh my God, what have I done to myself for the past month, who ate all those holiday cookies?” season—is here. But before you plunk down your year-end bonus for a gym membership you probably won't use (statistics show 67 percent of people with gym memberships never use them), consider getting a little creative. Here’s how to get fit and have fun, all while saving a ton of money.
Channel Your Inner Rocky IV
If you never made it to IV, bookmark this for later and cue up the fourth installment of the Italian Stallion’s saga where he (spoiler alert) wins the Cold War by getting shredded in Siberia. The key: splitting wood, carrying wood, and pulling weighted sleighs. But seriously, outdoor winter work is a major calorie burner because your body demands more oxygen and uses more energy to maintain body heat. Shovel snow, pull your kids around on saucer sleds, or build a fort. You’ll get strong and fit while also getting fresh air and exercise to boost your immunity and help keep you healthy during sick season.
Get Your House in Order
If general fitness is what you’re after, look no further than your mop, bucket, and vacuum. In a large study of 130,000 people across 17 countries published earlier this year, researchers from McMaster University found that doing household chores for half an hour, five days a week, slashes the risk of death by 28 percent and heart disease by 20 percent. For a real workout, get in there and move furniture, crawl low to get under beds, scrub walls. It’s kind of like CrossFit, but you get a clean house to boot.
Join a Virtual-Reality Training Session
There are so many online indoor trainer options, you don’t need to trudge out to the gym for a social workout. Train with an online team through TrainerRoad. Join a group ride on Zwift, or stoke your competitive fires by jumping into the program's new Zwift Crit Series.
Make Your Own WOD
Start every morning with your own workout of the day (à la CrossFit). Pick a body weight exercise for your upper body (try pushups/10 reps), your lower body (air squats/10 reps), and your core (mountain climbers/10 reps). Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and repeat the circuit as many times as you can.
Outfit Yourself
For less than the price of a gym membership, you can buy two sets of dumbbells and have all the equipment you need to work all your muscles. The classic hex dumbbells you see at the gym are available at places like Dick’s Sporting Goods for $20.
Get Ohm at Home
Yoga is ideal cross training for cyclists, as it builds strength and core stability while improving range of motion—something you don’t get from your bike. The other beautiful thing is that you only need a mat or some carpeted floor space to do a full routine. (My favorite mat is from Gaiam, which has guides for hand and foot placement. For just $30 you can get a starter yoga set that comes with a mat, stretching strap, and block to make hard poses easier.) You can find free online workouts or get access to hundreds of online classes for a small monthly fee through sites like yogadownload.com.
RELATED: 10 Things Everyone Who's Stoked to Ride All Winter Does
Play With Your Kids
Join your children as they practice their favorite sports. Shoot hoops, play hockey, toss a football, whatever they like. Kids not active? Try to get them into action by taking them hiking or sledding. Kids need 60 minutes of physical activity a day, and right now the average child aged 8-18 spends 7.5 hours a day with electronics. The change will do you both good.
Build Your Foundation
If you do no other exercise but cycling, you’re bound to have at least a few imbalances, especially if you also work a desk job for a living. You can address these at home, and build balanced strength and mobility, by performing a variety of planks for just a few minutes each day. Also check out Foundation Training moves online, which are specially designed to activate your glutes and strengthen your back and core—something nearly all cyclists could use.
Break Out the Burpees
Yes, burpees kind of suck. Why do they suck? Because they’re hard… and really effective. They make you huff and puff (high-intensity training anyone?) and build upper body, core, and lower body strength while also delivering some cardiovascular benefits. Gradually progress from day to day, aiming to work up to being able to do 50 at a time.
Go 30 for 30
Commit to a 30-day fitness challenge. You can find any number of them online, and all you need for most is a pair of dumbbells. Just download the app and track your progress on your smartphone.
Play Ball
Get a medicine ball and you’re all set to build balance, core stability, and even a little upper body bone. Commit to moves like ball tosses with a partner, squat overhead toss-and-catches with yourself, push ups with your hands (or feet) on the ball, and more. There are hundreds of moves to find online. Like dumbbells, you can get medicine balls at pretty much any major sporting good store, like this one from Dick’s for $54 (prices vary depending on size and weight). And they last forever: I have a 12-pound ball I’ve been using for 20 years.
Take the Stairs… Then Take ’Em Again
Stair climbing is among the most intense workouts you can do. A 2017 study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that participants who vigorously climbed up and down one flight of stairs three times for one minute each, with a one-minute recovery in between, three times a week raised their VO2 max by 7 percent after six weeks.
Suspend Yourself
For less than the price of many gym memberships, you can invest in a suspension training system like TRX. (Check it out here; units start at $150.) Just hook the straps up to a secure place like a door jam and work your muscles until they’re quivering with suspended pull-ups and assisted pistol squats.
Buddy Up for a Boot Camp
Grab a workout buddy or two and set up some Army-style training. Do a circuit of jumping jacks, pushups, high knees, walking lunges, triceps dips, side shuffles, and any other body weight moves you like. Do each exercise for 60-90 seconds, repeating the entire drill three times. You can do this solo as well, but it’s more fun with a friend.
Commit to Commuting
You already love to ride for fun. But do you also ride for transportation? If not, make this the year you resolve to commute by bike. Research shows that time spent riding to work and running errands delivers the same fitness gains as going to the gym. Research from earlier in 2017 found that bike commuters had a 41 percent lower risk of death from all causes than those who drive or take public transportation to work.
Sign Up for a Spartan Challenge
Take your cross training to the next level by signing up for a mud run-style event like a Spartan Challenge. Training for monkey bars, rope climbing, and spear throwing will get you fit while you’re also having fun.
Explore the Outdoors
It may be too cold and icy to ride, but that doesn’t mean you have to hunker down indoors to get fit. Hit the parks and trails for day hikes to build strength and stamina and enjoy the outdoors.
Volunteer Your Efforts
Do good while getting fit by donating your time (and sweat) toward community service. Sign up for a park cleanups, volunteer to shovel out the less-able in your neighborhood, go all in and get involved with Habitat for Humanity. Physical labor never felt so good.
Skip It
Wanna float like a butterfly and sting like a bee? Yeah, we all do. Pick up a jump rope and use it daily. You’ll burn 10 calories a minute while building explosive pedal-punching strength in your lower body muscles. You can use your kid’s old jump ropes, but it’ll be way easier with a good rope that has a little heft and smooth action to maintain momentum. I like this $7 speed rope from SPRI.
Download Some Apps
Name your workout, and there’s an app for it. Try a fitness app like Nike Training Club, Sworkit, or Daily Workouts for all the fitsporation you need.
Jump to It
Improve your power for sprints and punchy climbs with a plyometric routine you can do without leaving the house. Perform jump squats, plyometric lunges, and side jumps to start. Then add box or stair jumps. Aim for 1-3 sets of 10-20 reps for 30-60 seconds, depending on fitness. Do it twice a week.
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Surf YouTube
No need to sign up for fitness classes if you have a phone, tablet, or laptop. YouTube is brimming with fitness channels like FitnessBlender that will take you through entire workouts, warm-up to cool-down, all in the comfort of your living room.
Activate Your TV Time
You know you’re going to hunker down for your favorite Netflix specials this year. Turn a marathon session into, well, a marathon session by doing your binge watching from the saddle of your bike. Today’s bike trainers are light and quiet enough to set up in your living room without wrecking the viewing experience. Investing in a smart trainer like Wahoo Fitness Kickr Snap ($600 at Competitive Cyclist) also lets you join the fun with social training apps like Zwift.
Find (or Create) a Fitness Trail
Public parks sometimes have fitness stations, like dip and chin-up bars, so you can get a full-body workout in along with a walk, run, or jog. They’re a free, easy way to meet your fitness goals. And if your local park doesn’t have one, it’s easy enough to improvise by doing push-ups and dips off park benches.
Mush!
Got deep snow? Get some snowshoes and fry every bit of unwanted fat as you torch up to 1000 calories an hour, depending how hard and fast you go. Done regularly, snowshoeing will also make you strong on your bike. Snowshoe hill climbing strengthens your quads, descending builds hamstrings, and breaking trail conditions your hip flexors. Using snowshoe poles strengthens your chest, back, and arm muscles. I like ergonomic, lightweight shoes like the Atlas Fitness Snowshoe that allow you to hike with a natural gait.
Use Your Chair for the Greater Good
Chairs get a bad rap these days, with sitting considered as bad as smoking if you do it too much. Problem is, we’re not using chairs to their fullest potential. A sturdy chair is a full-service gym and rest station all in one. Use it for triceps dips, elevated push-ups (feet on seat) and glute bridges, semi-squats (tap the seat with each squat), and balance during single leg lifts. Then have a seat when you’re done.
Take It to the Floor
If you have a floor—and we bet you have at least one—you have all the gym you need to build a rock-solid core, which is a New Year’s goal every cyclist should make. Hit yours every morning for four core exercises. Try planks, push-ups, bridges, clamshells, scorpions, cobra chest lifts, bird dogs, and more. Let Google be your guide.
Make More Healthy Meals
Is your goal to lose weight? Exercise is fine, but you’re better off riding your bike and devoting that gym time to learning to cook healthy meals. Research overwhelmingly shows that what you eat influences weight loss and gains far more than how much you exercise. People who cook and eat at home are also more likely to lose weight and stay lean than those who eat out or order in. Learn to cook between five and seven go-to healthy dinners to fuel your way lean.
Get Fat
Try fat biking! Pushing those monster tires over the snow is a full-body, fat-scorching workout that can also put a giant smile on your face.
Employ Fido Fitness
Those five-minute perfunctory walks around the block aren’t really all the exercise your dog (or you) should get. Boost both of your fitness levels by committing to at least four longer exercise sessions a week. Tired dogs are good dogs, which makes for happy and fit owners.
