5 Tips to Easily Transition Your Training Routine to Indoor Workouts

Does being indoors disturb your fitness routine?

Sunshine and fresh air are inspirational: they make us feel great and push us to be active. They make us happy and positive. You can not say the same for gloomy clouds, rain, and scarce sun rays.

If you are like me, loving the great outdoors, being active in the fresh air, and with sand or grass under your feet, then you also have difficulty adjusting your fitness to staying inside. I wanted to help you (and myself) to easily transition to wintertime indoor workouts, here are my tips on how to successfully do it.

5 Tips for Indoor Workouts

1) Schedule your workouts

Although it might seem too much at first, scheduling your workouts is actually scientifically proven to help to keep the commitment. Open your calendar and put down 2 or 3 workout “appointments” per week. Set a reminder for the evening and morning before, so that you have enough time to (mentally) prepare.

And if you have an elliptical machine or an indoor bike you can take advantage of my 30-day Workout Plan to Get Rid of Your Belly Fat.

2) Join a fitness community

You’ve spent the summer around friends and family, or simply around other people enjoying the great weather. And now you are indoors, all on your own. Not cool.

Community support is great for keeping your motivation up, for getting better simply because of the inspirational people around you. And a healthy dose of competition 🙂

Whatever your choice of indoor fitness is, there is a community to back it up. Most successful communities are the ones where you can virtually “meet” and train with others, in real-time. That’s where our competitive side works best and brings the greatest results.

If you love indoor rowing you’ll love Michel’s story on how his indoor rowing workouts were transformed, just by using his Concept2 row erg, a VR headset, and a little bit of Magic.

3) Set realistic goals and celebrate your achievements with rewards

Workouts might be harder for you mentally than physically and that’s perfectly normal. The number 1 thing that will determine your success is incentives. If you want something really bad, you’ll do anything to achieve it.

But these incentives must be realistic, and obtainable. Transforming Your Mind to Transform Your Body Start is a recent article I wrote to help you achieve the right mindset for starting and keeping your workout routine. What you need to do next is to make a list of goals you want to get through your workouts. Remember: make them real, small (at first) and try to make them measurable.

For example, you can task yourself to achieve 30 minutes of mid-intensity rowing workouts 3 times per week for 60 days. Or you can aim for a 15 minute HIIT training every second day.

You can also focus on body transformation goals: lose 10 pounds by Christmas, or get strong and lean leg muscles through indoor cycling to fit those old jeans by New Year’s Eve.

The next step would be to plan rewards: how will you congratulate yourself on achieving your goals? Try not to include food as rewards, but rather focus on treats that will celebrate your better shape. New workout gear, new tech gadget, new dress. Whatever makes you feel good, without making you feel bad afterward 🙂

4) Find an indoor variation of what you already love

You are into rowing or other similar water sports: get a rowing machine. Concept2 with PM5, WaterRower, or Technogym Skill Row are all great indoor row ergs. And they are fantastic for indoor workouts, just check out these Amazing Benefits of Training on an Indoor Rowing Machine.

If you love running, get a treadmill, or even better an elliptical machine. An elliptical machine is a lot easier on your joints and gives you amazing workouts, especially if you are aiming at weight or fat loss.

And if you love getting on your bicycle and riding wherever the road takes you, don’t despair. You can still travel anywhere you want while being indoors on your indoor bicycle. You don’t know how?

It’s actually easy: HOLOFIT offers you amazing virtual worlds you can train in, anywhere from Paris, San Francisco to Antarctica, Canyon, or even Saturn Rings. Check out how Alexa uses HOLOFIT to Stay Fit While Having Fun on her Exercise Bike.

5) Finally: use Gamification to easily transition to your indoor workout routine

We’ve agreed already that the big change to the indoors can bring loneliness and boredom to your fitness. You can change this by adding Gamification to your workouts!

Gamification turns your workouts into a game. Sort of. Your brain is occupied with achieving gaming tasks while your body is getting the workout done. Or as we like to say about HOLOFIT: virtual workouts with real results!

In HOLOFIT, for example, you get to collect trophies, run after animals, or with them, compete with other HOLOFIT members in real-time. You can also include your family and friends, get them to row, run or bicycle with you through the Underworld or the fantasy world of Troglodytes. Or you can take a champion’s run in the Cambridge race!

You can see some of my suggestions for HOLOFIT High-intensity Full-body workout routines. All you need is a VR headset, and one of the cardio fitness machines to turn your indoor workouts into amazing adventures with real results.

We wanted to make it easy on you so you can take a free trial today.