If you and I are friends on Facebook, you may have seen this in your news feed yesterday morning:

As much as I love running (and all my fantastic cold weather running gear), some days I simply cannot motivate myself to get out the door.  One winter in college, I was training for a half marathon with my good friend and housemate Kate.  Kate’s bedroom was downstairs, and mine was upstairs, and we made a rule that if one of us wanted to bail on the morning run, we had to tell the other person face-to-face–no texting and no instant messaging (side note: remember when AIM was a thing and everyone was on it all the time?)  Often the hardest part of the run was just getting out of bed when the alarm went off at 5:45 a.m., so by eliminating the option of sending a text message saying, “I really need another hour of sleep,” we had better accountability.  We knew that if we could just get ourselves up and out the door, the run itself would be no problem.

One cold morning, my alarm buzzed, and it took everything inside me to put my feet on the floor (Okay, that’s pretty dramatic.  I really didn’t want to get out of bed, all right?)  I got dressed, walked downstairs, and acknowledged Kate, the whole time thinking, “Once I get out the door, I’ll be ready to go.”  Kate and I stepped outside, walked down the sidewalk towards the street, prepared our watches to start timing the run, and as we stood in the middle of the road, one of us (I honestly can’t remember who) said,

“I really don’t want to do this.”

And the other said, “Neither do I.”

And we walked back inside, put our pajamas back on, and crawled back in bed.

My point is this: sometimes the run simply is not going to happen.

What then?  Do you climb back in bed, sleep lightly for 30 more minutes, then at 4 p.m. regret not working out because you know you feel better when you do?  Well, despite the implication of my Facebook post from yesterday, I did squeeze in a 30 minute cardiovascular workout…from the comfort of my living room.  I’d like to share with you that workout as part of what I hope to make an ongoing series of “No Excuse Workouts”–those you can do in your living room, with little or no equipment, or when you are short on time–because, hey, we all have those days. 🙂

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The Excuse: It’s 16 degrees outside, and I want to hear “Today’s Professionals” on the Today Show give their unprofessional opinions on whether it matters if Beyonce lip-synced at President Obama’s inauguration.

The Workout:  No Rope-Jump Rope Cardio Circuits

Perform the following exercises for 1 minute each:

Jumping Jacks

Jump Rope

Mountain Climbers

Jump Rope

Butt Kicks

Jump Rope

Plank Jacks

Jump Rope

High Knees

Jump Rope

Repeat twice (complete the cycle a total of 3 times.)

The key is to keep moving to keep your heart rate up.  Can’t do plank jacks for an entire minute?  Go for as long as you can (then 5 seconds more because you can probably last longer than you think!), then jog in place until the minute is up.  Just keep moving!

Thumbs up for a pre-makeup living room workout 😉

You’ve completed your 30 minutes of physical activity for the day, you didn’t have to suffer the cold outdoors, and you now know that Star Jones was “inspired” by Beyonce’s rendition of the National Anthem, lip-syncing or not.

(Photo source)

Win, win, win. 😉