Exercise TV – Yippee! 1

2010-2011 has proven to be a fiercely-serious winter in Boston with multiple, heavy snowstorms, frigid temperatures, and cancelled meetings and events.  This weather has interfered with my daily outdoor walking, a physical and spiritual practice I’ve written about on this blog before.

• I don’t walk on ice. 


• I don’t walk when snow is piled high because of uneven sidewalk clearing and large snow banks on corners where the snowplows have piled it.  These corner mounds make it difficult to cross the street and see oncoming traffic.


• Walking in the snow on the city streets means zig zagging.  While I zag sometimes, I almost never zig.  J 


• I also find it difficult to warm up when the temperature is below freezing.

Perhaps one day I’ll learn to snowshoe and will go up to Pope John Paul Park or over to Franklin Park to practice.  Maybe one day I’ll try cross-country skiing again – after all I had a Nordic Track for years and know the movements well.   Until that day happens, I’ve been walking indoors.

There’s a little gem I’ve discovered – Exercise TV .  It’s available 24/7 on the “On Demand” menu of my cable.  It offers a diverse selection of exercise offerings, including indoor “walks.”  (They are called walks because of the simple movements and because they are the equivalent of 1, 2 or 3 mile walks depending on which you choose.)  I have done 22, 35 and 48 minute tapes led by such exercise industry stalwarts as Leslie Sansone and Jane Fonda.  I’ve also done a tape by Chris Freytag, who I hadn’t heard of before.  Her walking tape provides interval training with weights.  Today, I did an interval tape with weights and calisthenics by Jillian Michaels (of Biggest Loser fame).

They’re free!  You have to get through a couple of brief commercials at the beginning of the tapes, mostly for Jenny Craig and for Exercise TV which encourages you to buy the tapes they offer.  I grab my water bottle while those are playing. 

These tapes are saving my sanity and keeping me limber.  They’re giving me the sweet sweat that helps keep troubles and sadness at bay. They will probably also get me to convert some of my old exercise videos that I love into DVDs.  (A great catalogue of exercise tapes is available from Collage Video .)

Lately, I’ve been doing the tapes in the middle of the day to break up the time I sit at the computer.  It’s fun to break a sweat, looking at the snow out my window, without having to go to an exercise club or leave the warmth of my house.  Doesn’t get better than this.

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