Remember the Great Pole-Dancing for Exercise Craze of 2008? Well, meet its cooler, hipper, and -- dare we say? -- sexier sister: burlesque class. Burlesque dancing has been around since the 1840s, and now it's taken on a new life as an exercise trend. At Scandalesque, a burlesque theater and studio in Phoenix, Ariz., real burlesque performers are the class teachers. They outfit their students in appropriate sexy garb and lead them through fast-paced choreography that blends hip hop, jazz, and bump-and-grind for more toned muscles and increased flexibility.
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Surfing -- without the water
You can take the surfboard out of the water -- but can you take the water out of surfing? With SurfSet Fitness at the Sports Center at Chelsea Piers in New York City, you can hop on a completely dry board for a total body workout. The board is actually a new piece of fitness equipment called the RipSurfer X, which moves to simulate a surfboard in water. There's plenty of cardio to get you sweating, and it takes a lot of concentration and core muscles to stay atop the moving board.
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Learn how to juggle
Now, here's what every girl needs: a workout that burns 280 calories an hour and doubles as a handy party trick. Heather Wolf, a group fitness trainer and personal trainer in Gulf Breeze, Fla., promotes the benefits of juggling for health with her program, JuggleFit. Wolf says juggling improves coordination, strengthens your core, helps ward off stress, and best of all, doesn't feel like exercise.
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Revisit a recess fave
Remember the great games you played during recess when you were a kid -- things like four-square, handball, and jump rope games? Punk Rope, a fitness center in New York City, uses the heart-pumping abilities of jumping rope and combines them with recess fun. The workouts are all set to a specific theme and accompanied by lots of music to distract from any of the discomfort of, you know, working out. What's more, you'll get fit, fast: Tim Haft, Punk Rope's founder, says you can expect to reduce calories while increasing your strength, agility, and even your mood while you work out with the class.
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Kangoo
To know the difference between a standard aerobics class and a Kangoo class, all you have to do is look at your feet. You'll be wearing special shoes that have a springy mechanism on their bottoms. Kangoos are said to help you burn up to 50 percent more calories than regular cardio classes (that can add up to a whopping 750 to 1500 cals per hour!), while taking all the pressure off your knees, joints, and back. "Each boot weighs 2 pounds," says Tamara Barber, a group fitness manager and Kangoo instructor at Fitness Formula Clubs in Chicago. "You have to push your body weight down in order to get the bounce up." With Kangoo classes popping up all around the country, people are clearly jumping into the new trend. To find a class in your area, check out the Kangoo Club website.
Raise your hand if you're excited about working out later. Anybody? Uh, anybody?
Yeah, as much as we hate to admit it, we're not so psyched either. Just the idea of driving to the gym, changing, waiting in line for the elliptical, finally getting on the elliptical, doing crunches, showering � there's a reason they call it working out. Maybe that's why so many of us throw in the towel and watch the numbers on the scale climb. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 18.8 percent of us meet the physical activity guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity.
"People are used to thinking of exercise as something that has to fit into certain parameters: has to be in a gym, or you have to be wearing athletic clothing," says Maria Brilaki, founder of Fitnessreloaded.com, a fitness habits website. "All those rules burden exercise and limit creativity. They make working out so complicated!"
While that may be true, the good news is that workouts don't have to be like this. In fact, they can actually be easy and enjoyable. The proof is in these 10 new workouts -- routines that we promise are so completely different from what you've been doing in the gym, you won't even realize you're actually blasting calories, improving your strength, melting unwanted fat, and getting healthier all around.
You heard us: this is fitness that's fun.
Now who's excited about working out? Read on to find out about the newest workouts that don't feel like work.
