Bringing the Fun Back to A Workout

I love to workout. That is no mystery.  However, if I had to face 45 minutes alone on the elliptical or treadmill, I think I'd rather be beat with a stick.  I've tried music, my Nook, and any amount of celebrity gossip mags, and I'm bored to death every time.  So, I can see why a lot of people view working out as a chore. But as in anything in life, if you find a way to make it fun, it becomes like recess hour from elementary school...a break from the daily grind to make your workouts fun. Here are a few ways we find to distract ourselves with fun in the gym (and a lot of these you don't even need a gym to accomplish):

• First of all, we gather up a group of us.  Everything is more fun with friends and working out is no different.  And, the farther out you cast your net, the more of a chance that you always have a workout buddy or two or six or greater (as is our case).
• Second trick we use: Workout Poker. You just grab a deck of playing cards and assign a move to each suit (arms, legs, core) then make each of the face cards a cardio move for a certain amount of time.  Then you deal the deck and play through the whole thing.  For example: if you made hearts crunches and you dealt an eight of hearts, then you'd do eight crunches.  And if you made kings high knees, then every time a king is dealt, no matter the suit, you would do high knees for the agreed upon amount of time (we started with 30 seconds and worked our way up to a minute). An example of one of our first pokers is here. 
• Another thing we do to keep things fresh is a workout I created that has come to be known as Stair Hell.   The back stairs of our building are right outside of our gym.  So we run a set of stairs (whether it's one flight, two or three, according to the fitness level) and then come back into the gym to do 25 reps of a different exercise each time, each hitting different area of the body. Then it's back to running the stairs again and back and forth like that for thirteen rounds (which simulates going from the basement to the roof of our building).  We motivate ourselves by wiping tick marks off of  a dry erase board in the gym as each round of stairs is completed.  Also motivational: the different folks coming to and from the gym on the staircase who call encouragements and give high fives as we climb by. 
• Something else we are in the works of cooking up with are some different themed workouts.   We've dreamed up a 70's dance moves with weights workout, set to a disco soundtrack and brainstormed a recess/field day workout a la elementary school.
• When the weather is not scalding, we take our workout outside and use our surroundings as a gym whether it be on the Riverwalk next to the Cape Fear River or the dreaded street down from our work that is known as (using a Bella Lugosi voice) The Hill.
• And, when all else fails we use distraction.  For example, we were doing timed wall sits the other day in the group exercise room and someone started the wave. We laughed as we tried to coordinate our wave around the room and the time spent in that uncomfortable position went by in a no time. Also, in today's workout, one round consisted of timed planks. The timer's job was to come up with a topic and the rest of us would shout out answers.  Today's topic: good food that is bad for us. The responses were fast and numerous: Pizza Hut Pizza, Ben and Jerry's, french fries, donuts, ice cream,  brownies with ice cream, grilled cheese, nacho cheese, fried cheese, anything with cheese...

Like I said, I'd rather just about be beat than to spend my gym time on a machine zoning out. But, if you think outside the box and get a little creative with your friends, gym time is fun again!