Plenty of people love exercising, but are you one of the many who finds it to be more of a chore? Well, you know you have to exercise – so perhaps choosing hobbies that have workouts built into them would be a more engaging way for you to get your sweat on! What better type of hobby than one that clandestinely helps your reach your daily or weekly exercise goal? Some of the many hobbies can double as exercise sessions include:

1. Gardening can be a great workout if you’re tending to your whole yard. Between squatting down near the ground, getting up and down, walking around outside, mowing your lawn, lugging mulch and other tools around, you’ll be sweating in no time flat.
2. Carpentry for home renovations is often one of the most intense workouts going. Whether you are using your triceps and biceps to saw and sand wood, walking back and forth between the garage and work-site for tools all day, climbing up and down ladders, hammering nails into place or holding heavy wood and other materials up to be secured, you are definitely working out while you’re working on a project! (Just be careful of repetitive motions like hammering that can cause tendinitis).
3. Sailing or kayaking are beautiful, serene ways to get fresh air in your lungs, a breathtaking view in your eye-line while engaging in a great upper body workout. With sailing, kayaking and fishing, you have to use multiple upper body muscles to row, hoist sails or haul up heavy fish. Kayaking is a particularly good workout as you are constantly rowing side-to-side, using your triceps, biceps, obliques, abs and overall core to propel the vessel forward.
4. Mural painting or sculpting may seem like a stretch, but if you are a mural painter you know it can be exhausting on the arm muscles. You can certainly engage all kinds of muscle groups if you are painting a large area like a house or wall. You are always reaching, getting on and off the ladder or scaffolding and re-positioning it to start painting the next spot. You must have discipline to paint like that for hours at a time. Similarly, those who sculpt rock know how much of a core workout it can be. Chipping away at stone with a pick or pneumatic tool requires you to re-position yourself constantly around the piece to ensure it can be displayed in the round.
5. Drumming gets the heart-rate up while utilizing your entire body. Your legs are constantly pumping the pedals, while your arms are non-stop working all the elements from high hats right across to the floor tom (and everything in between). Not only do you need coordination, but you also need a pretty strong core to pivot around the kit, tirelessly working each limb in its own small pursuit of a beat.
6. Berry picking can be pleasant to grueling, depending on how long you go, how large of an area you span, how heavy your buckets are and whether you are picking in the heat or on a nice overcast day. This is a workout-hobby most can do with ease, but it certainly can be challenging to constantly crouch down near the ground and then spring back up to move to a different spot for hours at a time while lugging gallons of berries. Forget lunges, try berry picking to really work those glutes!
7. Beach scavenging is a relaxing and scenic way to exercise while pursuing a hobby. Some people scan the beach for driftwood, or for beach glass, or simply for oddities like dried out sand-dollars. Regardless of your goal, beach scavenging can be great for light exercise. You’re walking the whole day, occasionally squatting to pick up items of interest, and often carrying around buckets of items or your gear which can be beneficial for adding resistance.

So there you have it! Did any of these hobbies appeal to you? If so, start one tomorrow to set your new hobby-turn-exercise routine in motion! Getting fit while you’re having fun can’t be beat! Thanks for visiting DocChat! We hope you’ll be back soon.