Fitness trend
Is cozy cardio the perfect workout for winter?
© (JLco) Julia Amaral / Adobe Stock
Exercising yourself, increasing your performance and going beyond your own limits? That’s not what “Cozy Cardio” is about. This is what the fitness trend is all about.
Our bodies – and our minds – need exercise to stay healthy. However, there is no patent recipe for what this movement looks like. Because some people love jogging, while others prefer to practice yoga or Pilates. Some people work out on the equipment in the gym, while others prefer to exercise in nature. What is good for us individually varies greatly, and that is a good thing.
Because many of us associate sport and physical activity with the fact that we have to torture ourselves, that we have to constantly improve our own performance and that we should push ourselves to our limits – and ideally even exceed them. And yes: those Workouts can work well for a very athletic minority. On the other hand, they can also put us under so much pressure that we prefer not to do any sport at all – for fear that we won’t be able to keep up.
Cozy Cardio: Relaxed exercise instead of pressure to perform
And this is exactly where a fitness trend that is currently dominating TikTok and Co. comes in: Cozy Cardio. Instead of seeing sport as just another component of the omnipresent compulsion to self-optimize, it’s about integrating activities into everyday life that are good for us and that we simply do for ourselves. The main thing with cozy cardio is that we (again) find joy in movement and move in a way that feels good. And this can help us, especially in winter, when it is already difficult to motivate yourself.
Physical activity is viewed as individual as it really is. We look for the workout that is right for us at that moment and that is easy for us to do – and that we might even want to do. For some, their personal cozy cardio might be a leisurely jog or a brisk walk in the park. But then without a heart rate monitor or mileage tracker, instead we listen to our feelings. Or we do a few Pilates exercises in the living room at home while our favorite series is on. Or we treat ourselves to a yoga class in the studio around the corner instead of dragging ourselves to the cycling class that we don’t feel like going to. You see: It’s not always about cardio training in the literal sense, but simply about physical activity.
Is cozy cardio enough of a workout?
But are such soft workouts really enough to get or stay fit? That depends a bit on what our individual goal is when training. If it’s about doing something good for our physical and/or mental health and finding more motivation to exercise in everyday life, then Cozy Cardio can absolutely be the right way. Because every minute that we are active instead of sitting on the sofa helps our health.
However, if you actually want to improve your own athletic performance or build muscle or lose weight, you could achieve better results with more intensive workouts and more targeted training.
Most of us know that a little more exercise would feel good, but we often can’t bring ourselves to do it because we feel pressured and believe that only “real” training counts. And this is where Cozy Cardio comes in – and could be exactly the gentle push we needed.
Sources used: healthline.com, fitforfun.de, health.com