The 5 Best Alternative Workouts in Brooklyn
Just as there isn’t any one-size-fits-all plan for healthy eating, there is no “right” way to exercise. Despite that, it seems like most people we know (or, at least, the ones who exercise regularly) fall into one of two camps: the ones who run and the ones who practice yoga. And in our experience, runners and yoga-devotees are not shy about advocating for their exercise method of choice, which has led us, in our own quest for something resembling physical fitness, to try both things, with varying degrees of success.
But each time we throw myself into either running or yoga, we wind up encountering the same problems, and the same need to look for a different way to squeeze fitness into our life. With running, our problem is simple: we get bored. Now, usually, pain isn’t boring to us, but when it comes to running? Even extreme pain isn’t enough to keep us interested. The lengthy amount of time that we need to run to get in a solid workout leaves us alone with our thoughts for too long, and, frankly, that’s just not a place we want to be. And we don’t think we’re alone on that! A lot of other people we’ve talked to feel the same way. Really! Even listening to podcasts doesn’t help, and podcasts are the cure to almost every problem, or so we assume based on their ubiquity. And as for yoga? It’s not so much that it’s boring. It’s just that it’s frequently time consuming to get to a class, and once there, class quality is hugely dependent not only on the teacher, but also on factors like how crowded the class is and whether it is structured well enough to really give us a good workout.
All of which has led us to look for alternatives to running and yoga. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with traditional and popular ways of working out. It’s just that some of us might want to expand our exercise horizons, find good ways to work up a sweat at home, and, you know, get the kind of workout that makes every muscle in our body quake so that we start shaking uncontrollably, convinced that we’re on the verge of self-destructing, when really we’re just about to reach some higher level of being, one where we have actual muscles. Anyway, whatever your fitness level and whatever your fitness (and budgetary!) needs, we’ve got 5 great alternatives to yoga classes and running the Prospect Park loop for you right here.
