Watch TV While You Work Out

Exercising during a pandemic is a good, healthy use of your time. Exercising while binging your favourite shows is an even better use of your time. Maybe getting the ol’ heart pumping while also watching a bunch of Real Housewives drink copious amounts of alcohol and bicker with each other over stupid shit is something everyone else figured out pre-coronavirus. But it was an epiphany for me, and it has made me very happy.

Before normal life went up in flames, I used to primarily exercise in a gym. Well now I won’t be stepping foot in one of those until I’ve been properly and thoroughly vaccinated. And before, when I did work out at home, I would hop on our hand-me-down treadmill and stare out my bedroom window whilst listening to a podcast. It was fine, but the same view of the same tree branches got a little old after a couple of years of that.

When the machine finally sputtered its final breaths, I replaced it with this very small but surprisingly effective elliptical that will fit in basically any room. I put it in my office, I pointed it directly at my computer monitor, I pulled up YouTube TV, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, I set the volume to full power, and away I went. I proceeded over the next few months to watch Jamestown, The English Game, seasons 1 and 2 of Dead to Me, Hollywood, Sweet Magnolias and the first five seasons of Schitt’s Creek (I’m saving the final season for when the pandemic depression really sets in this winter).

Perhaps the best part about me committing to watching lots of period dramas and comedies while I work out is that these shows have shifted me from a 30-minute, 3- or 4-day-a-week exerciser to a 45-minute, 4- or 5-day-a-week exerciser; mostly because I’m usually really into the show and they’re either around 40-45 minutes long or 20(ish) minutes long, in which case I watch two episodes.

So pull your exercise machines, your hand weights and your resolve in front of a screen so you, too, can multitask in this most amazing way.