Winter Guide

8 Out-of-the-Box Ways to Keep Your Workouts Fresh

From trampoline fitness to fencing, there's something new and fun for everyone

So Rhode Island Magazine ·

The key to keeping your New Year’s resolution to exercise more is to keep your workouts fun. Mix up your routine and enjoy yourself while breaking a sweat. You’ll actually look forward to going to the gym.

A Different Kind of Curls
You can curl your bicep, or you can curl… a stone. The Ocean State Curling Club is a statewide curling league that meets in Cranston at the Cranston Veterans Memorial Arena. The league matches up teams of four players who slide 40lb granite stones across the ice and try to land more of their stones closer to the target than the other team’s. Sounds simple, but it’s more complicated (and more of a workout) than you think. Check it out for yourself at one of their Learn to Curl sessions, or just bite the bullet - er, stone - and join the club. 

Dance Around the World
Providence arts collaborative AS220 offers tons of ways to broaden your cultural horizons, from indie rock concerts to 3D printing classes to… Contemporary African Dance. AS220 hosts weekly drop-in classes in yoga, ballet, modern dance and - you guessed it - African dance. Learn the moves that are all the rage on the other side of the world.

Jump Into Fitness
Remember back in the day when you’d jump on a trampoline just for fun? Jounce Fitness in Johnston is a low impact, high result workout on a trampoline, based on NASA research that exercise using G-force has increased benefits to the body. What that means for you: a super fun hour bouncing around to great music, with the added benefit of burning roughly 40 million calories per class.

Be A Cheer-tator
You might not be able to fit into your old cheerleading uniform, but you can feel those Friday Night Lights again at Providence’s Cheer Up Athletics. The cheerleading gym primarily works with school teams, but they offer open gym on Sundays where adults can work on jumping, tumbling, stunting, dancing and reliving their glory days.

Hone Your Swordsmanship
So you don’t normally get to play with swords, right? Spar and jab to your heart’s content at Rhode Island Fencing Academy. The East Providence studio offers kids and adult classes for beginners, experts and people looking to hone their historical fighting skills. No, really. Winter is coming, and you’d better be prepared.

Jump Through Hoops
It turns out hula hooping isn’t just fun for kids. It’s still fun for grownups, and it’s actually a pretty great cardio and core workout. Cardioglow in Barrington offers Hoop There It Is classes, combining childhood nostalgia with a good solid hour of elevated heart rate. If you’re not quite so coordinated with your hips, try a Dance Cardio class instead - just as fun, but without all of the pesky bending over to pick up your dropped hoop.

Hang Ten
While you can technically surf in the winter, only the most passonate surfers will brave the ocean when temps are below freezing. Capture the summer feeling at Surfset classes at Wakefield’s Coastal BodyWorx. The classes take place on an actual surfboard, and strengthen your core while stretching your muscles and honing your sense of balance.

Move To Your Own Drum
In a Pound class, you hold two oversized drumsticks and turn the studio into your own personal set of drums. The rhythmic jumping workout is offered at The Edge Fitness for Women in East Greenwich and Cranston, and challenges your muscles, your sense of balance, your endurance and your ability to keep the beat.

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