Cardiovascular exercise is good for you. Plain and simple. Cardio consists of any activity that uses your large muscle groups at a moderate level, for an extended period of time, in order to raise your heart rate and keep it up. Cardio burns calories, works your heart to keep it strong, and it challenges you.

I think most people are finally catching on that you should do SOME kind of cardio to help yourself stay in shape. The thing that I believe most people don’t catch onto, though, is that cardio doesn’t have to be an hour on the treadmill, elliptical, stair-stepper, or recumbent bike. Sure, if you like those machines, rock ’em out! If you like swimming, cycling, or running outside, by all means, do it! Do all of it! But what if you don’t like those types of activities? Then cardio becomes a chore. Nobody wants chores. We hate chores. We want our chores to complete themselves, so we don’t ever have to think about them. Go ahead dishes, wash yourselves, I want to read a magazine. When your workout becomes chore-like, you start to despise it and eventually stop doing it.

Enter: Just Dance, Dance Dance Revolution, Michael Jackson, The Experience, etc. These are all video games that get you up off your bum and shakin’ it. In a day and age where everybody has a Wii or some sort of game console, you have these dancing games that are so much FUN. They’re also hilarious to watch! And an added bonus: You can get your heart rate up and burn a few hundred calories just in about 20-30 minutes of booty shakin’! One of my clients wore her heart rate monitor while doing Wii’s Just Dance 2 over the holidays with her younger cousin and burned 400 calories in about 30 minutes. AND had a complete blast doing it! One of my other clients bought it “for her daughter” so she could be doing that on her cardio days instead of running outside in the 20 degree weather. I rocked out to Michael Jackson’s The Experience this weekend, (well for 2 songs, until I started coughing up my lungs… damn bronchitis won’t go away) and can definitely attest to its effectiveness and fun-ness. I highly recommend it.

So if you’re wondering about your New Year’s fitness goals, or dreading doing your cardio because maybe you don’t belong to a gym, or maybe it’s too cold where you live to go running outside, or maybe you just HATE to run (like me), find something you can do that’s fun, that will raise your heart rate and keep it up for a bit (20 minutes is a good period to get some cardio in if you’ve got it). Plus, if you’ve got kids, and it’s hard for you to get away because you’ve got to watch/deal with them, it’s something you guys can all do together. Boo-yah. Problems solved. Just dance.