2014 Fitness Trending Toward a Fresh Workout for You

By: Hope Osborn

Are you tired of your old fitness routine and need something to liven it up again? I know mine needs revitalizing. Maybe we need to switch it up and find out what is new and exciting for 2014 in the fitness world.

One way to freshen up our workout is with The American College of Sports Medicine’s (ACSM) top 2014 fitness trend—High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), sometimes packaged as P90x or Crossfit. This calorie-burning exercise provides maximum benefit for a minimal amount of time, averaging 30-45 mins. per routine (and who of us doesn’t need to save time?). This includes warm-up and stretch down. In HIIT you work hard in short bursts of activity doing a mix of anything from sprinting or jumping jacks to overhead presses or lunges and more, breaking it up with brief recovery intervals. The best part is that you can choose the exercises that interest you. HIIT makes for a time-friendly high-energy cardio workout.

But don’t stop with the cardio blast. You and I both know that we need to round it out with work on strength and endurance. Other top fitness trends reported by ACSM includes body-weight training and strength training, each of which would meet the requirement of the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, promoting at least 2 or more days of muscle-strengthening exercise activities a week. Body-weight training, as its name implies, uses the weight of your own body in exercises such as pull-ups, push-ups, and planks to strengthen your muscles. Strength training is probably not new to you since, if you aren’t using them yourself yet, you have seen plenty of action in your gym with weight machines from others like you intent on a total body experience. The weights are just waiting for you at your gym to get started in this valuable part of your perfect 2014 workout.

Maybe you just don’t know where to begin with a new routine or you need a little extra motivation. Go with a variation of a long standing top fitness trend. Sign yourself up for a personal trainer. The variation is a big plus for us. Professionals surveyed by ACSM were sensitive to the economy and more particularly to our budgets, encouraging personal training groups instead. A personal trainer can optimize your cardio and strengthening fitness routine in a way that perks your interests and meets your time constraints. And doing it in a small group of old or new friends is a motivation in itself for your gym time.

Taking advantage of these top 2014 fitness trends will fire you up for a new and exciting workout catered to meet your time and budgetary constraints and unique interests. Are you fired up for your workout yet? I am.

Works Cited
Thompson, Walter. “Now Trending: Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2014.” ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal 17.6 (2013): 10-20. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.