You stayed home on Valentine’s Day because of your body shape?

February 16th, 2010

Spend some money and get ready for 2011

You hate jogging, right? Here are some alternatives to get you into shape. All of them are designed to get quick results. According to Nick Hudson, fitness manager for Virgin Active, exercise should also be accessible and enjoyable. “Exercise in general will be less about thinking and more about enjoyment. Effective exercise is no longer about complicated, technical workouts on individual muscles.”

Toning shoes

A host of heirs to the MBT (or Masai Barefoot Technology) throne have pushed toning shoes into the mainstream. Among them are FitFlops, which claim to tighten your bum and work muscles while you walk. The “balance pods” under the heel and forefoot of Reebok’s Easytone shoe promise to give you 28 percent more of a workout.

Rollerski

This is skiing and involves two bits of wood, four wheels and two sticks: no snow required. Your feet clip into the skis at the toes, leaving your heels free to lift, as with cross-country skiing. It uses 90 percent of the body’s muscles, providing a killer all-over workout.

Kranking

Kranking is spinning, but with your arms, a cardo workout from the waist up.

You’ll need a Krankcycle to get started, an “arm bike” if you can imagine such a thing, with hand-pedals instead of handlebars.

Zumba

Zumba combines all the latest hot dance moves. It’s salsa on speed, with a dash of mambo, samba and meringue thrown in for good measure. Classes burn around 700 calories an hour.

ViPR

Grab a giant rubber tube and get going. You can choose your weight, from 4kg to 20kg, and choose what you do with it, from throwing it to stepping on it. ViPR, by the way, stands for Vitality, Performance and Reconditioning.

Hooping

A playground classic making a comeback. First lady Michelle Obama “hooped” with schoolchildren on the White House lawn last year, helping to reignite the craze. Hooping works more than 30 core muscles of the body – and you don’t even need to shell out for an exercise class.

Exergaming

Nintendo rules the roost with its Wii Fit games, but there’s also the EA Sports Active. Your Shape Wii is a bit like having your own personal trainer because it features a camera that gives you instant feedback on your body shape.

Shake Weight

The Shake Weight is a vibrating dumbbell that relies on the unlikely-sounding technology of “dynamic inertia” to tone your arms in just six minutes a day.

Aerial fitness

This involves swinging through the sky on trapeze-style bars to tone up. It’s certainly more fun than your average exercise class. A workout called Jukari: Fit to Fly comes with a Cirque du Soleil seal of approval.

Indo Board

If wobble boards just don’t do it for you, then try investing in an Indo Board. Imagine surfing indoors on a bit of wood balanced on a separate tube and you’ll get the gist.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 10:15 am and is filed under Finance, Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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