Alex and I are getting tired of running. It’s to the point now where we’re running longer than my attention span for movies is so we tried something different tonight. We had a “family bootcamp”.

THE SET-UP

We set a timer for 30  minutes and put on Pandora’s Pop and Hip-Hop Workout station. If you have kiddos, this probably wouldn’t be the best station for you to listen to, but it worked well for our purposes. I tried Justin Bieber at first and Alex threatened to quit before we even got started.

THE WORK-OUT

In short, each person takes a turn saying what the exercise is and how many you have to complete. In the span of 30 minutes, we did Burpies, punches, leg lifts, planks, push-ups, jumping jacks, lunges, sit-ups, free-style, ice skaters, and more. The person who says the exercise also says how many you do. You don’t have much time to think about it- you just guess how many would be a good number. On some excercises, we ended up not doing enough; on many, we ended up laying on the floor before we could finish them (I’m looking at you, burpies).

For the last two minutes, we did a cool down with stretches, where each person got to choose.

THE BENEFITS

In a nutshell, super-fun together time. Maybe I’ve mentioned that Alex can literally run circles around me so we haven’t run together in months. This was a really fun way for us to work-out together while challenging each other. We talked about how kids would LOVE this because they would get a chance to choose the exercise and they get to be the boss for a fit. We’re already planning to do this with our daughter when she gets here.

Also, we balance each other out. Alex is really great at super-hardcore cardio stuff and I like to do more of the toning, smaller muscles stuff. We also tend to focus on different body parts so we got a well-balanced workout.

I could totally see doing this with a friend or with your whole family. It’s a great alternative to running and/or sitting in front of the TV for “togetherness”.

We’re planning on doing it again next week. Maybe we’ll video tape it…