Ah, snowy mornings. There’s nothing like them.

That feeling of waking up and then finding out that you don’t need to go into school or work because it’s snowed out.

Magic.

Cuddling up with the family and the dog and just having a long, hearty breakfast together.

Can’t beat it.

But there’s only one problem with snow, and of course, it’s related to exercise.

Here’s the deal – snowy outdoors are NOT a good place to work out. If you’re looking to head outside and maybe do a little personal bootcamp training, snow days are not the kind of climate you’re looking for.

Now most people who know me well know that I love doing mindful things in an outdoor setting – simply put, if you’ve never meditated, prayed or worked out outdoors, you’ve never fully experienced the true ‘alive-ness’ of those activities.

In fact, I love working out outdoors so much that I’ve actually set a goal for myself over the course of my lifetime to travel around the world to as many amazing outdoor peaks and lookout points as I can get to, and to do a workouts session, a meditation session and a prayer session at each one of those places.

A lofty goal, but then, what’s the point of mundane ones?

Right now I’m actually in training, if you will, for the upcoming outdoor fitness season this spring. I will hopefully be teaching a couple of bootcamp classes in the early mornings come April, and I’ve had to be honest with myself and realize that I am totally in awful shape to do that, as things stand right now.

I’ve always been more of a weights and resistance training kind of guy, and as per my previous posts you know by now that I’m not a fan of running or long, slow endurance cardio. But I’ve realized that true fitness is about being well-rounded in multiple facets of physical exertion and I’m sorely lacking on the outdoor fitness sector of my health. Plus, it just sounds ENERGIZING to know that each morning I get to wake up super early and spend an hour just pushing my body to the limits.

Part of me is scared and apprehensive, but part of me absolutely cannot wait to get started.

The problem is that my training regimen has had a total spanner thrown in the works due to all the snow outside (here in Baltimore, we call 1-2 inches a LOT of snow). So I’m kind of stuck, being unable to train the way I want to.

I was thinking to myself about how to overcome this problem, and realized that my favorite type of workouts – bodyweight micro workouts – would actually be the ideal answer. I just need to spread them out over a longer period of time so that they’re not so ‘micro’. But the principles remain the same.

Naturally, I’m totally psyched to try this out but also a little scared. After all, micro workouts are intense even when done for a couple of minutes, so spreading them out over the course of an hour is going to be HELL.

So, the challenge lies before me. Tomorrow morning when I get up I begin my micro workout preparation program. Here’s the program I plan on using:

Warmup:

Y squats
Inchworm
Glute bridges
Yoga pushup

Rationale:
I didn’t overthink this one. 2 upper body exercises and 2 lower body exercise, both of which cover as many muscles as possible. The front and back of the legs get worked with glute bridges and the squats, as well as some ankle mobility and calf stretching on the inchworm and yoga pushup. Both of the upper body exercise take a large amount of muscles through a great range of motion and work on shoulder mobility and stability, and Y squats get the scaps warmed up and firing. Short, quick, well-rounded. A nice little simple warmup.

Circuit 1:

Jumping Jacks
Pushups
Bodyweight squats
Planks
15 seconds of as many reps as you can do for each exercise

Interval Training 1:

Sprinting on the spot – 30 seconds
Walking around the room – 30 seconds
Repeat both of these 4 times

Circuit 2:

Burpees
Side planks
Reverse lunges
Prisoner squats

Interval Training 2:

Side to side jumps – 30 seconds
Bird dogs – 30 seconds

Circuit 3:

Mountain Climbers
Close grip pushups
Walking single leg RDLs
Prone Cobras

Interval Training 3:

Split squats – 30 secs
Yoga Table – 30 secs

Circuit 4:

Squat jumps
Walking pushups
Walking lunges
Plank with one foot elevated

Interval training 4:

Burpees – 30 seconds
Glute bridges – 30 seconds

Instructions:

Complete as many reps as you can perform in 15 seconds of each exercise in the circuits, after which you move on to the next exercise. Do each circuit 4 times through, resting for 1 minute before you repeat the circuit. If doing a unilateral exercise (e.g. lunges) do all reps in a given circuit with one leg and then switch legs for the next circuit.

After repeating the circuit 4 times through, rest for 1 minute and then do the interval training circuit that follows it 4 times through, alternating between the high intensity activity and the low intensity activity with no break in between.

After completing all 4 rounds of the interval training combo, rest for 1 minute and then move on to the next circuit.

Complete all 4 circuits and all 4 interval combos for a total workout time of 52 minutes – which, combined with a 5 minute warmup circuit and 5-10 minutes of cooldown stretching gets you right around the 1 hour mark in total.

I think it’s safe to say that that would be an absolutely BRUTAL one hour’s worth of exercise! Just about every muscle in the body gets worked there (the back could perhaps use a little more attention but it’s pretty tough to address that if you’re trying to do indoor bodyweight workouts with no equipment), and there’s some strength training, endurance training, energy systems training, and a helluva kick for your metabolism. Anyone who did that program would burn fat like never before, that’s for sure.

So my goal is to be able to blow through a program like this by the time April rolls around. No tall feat, and it will require getting out there pretty much every day to do workouts like this. I’m MAJORLY pumped to get started on this.

Meanwhile, I’ll start by maybe just doing each little circuit as a micro workout at various points throughout the day, as well as stringing a couple of the circuits and intervals together into 20-30 minute programs.

Tomorrow, I hope to film the first circuit shown above so that you can actually see it in action. I just got my new Polaroid HD camera so I’m psyched to use it!

Alright, I think I’ll leave it there for now. Hopefully this post got you pumped up and thinking about some outdoor fitness and micro fitness workouts for serious cardio and fat blasting effect. It didn’t take a whole lot of genius to come up with – just think of a bunch of exercises and string them together. Be creative and have some fun with it! Soon, you’ll be getting your own micro workouts to rev you up into higher gear just like the ones shown above!

Stay motivated, stay warm (if you’re in the northern hemisphere, that is) and stay PUMPED about micro workouts!

(Photo by Per Ola Wiberg)