Hope Zuckerbrow, founder of the cozy cardio wellness movement, shows her workout set-up, including a walking pad, smoothie and remote control for watching television. This undated image shows Hope Zuckerbrow, founder of the “cozy cardio” wellness outine. Cozy cardio simply involves walking in place – in the comfort of your home – using a mini treadmill or “walking pad.
Forget “no pain, no gain.” Cozy cardio acknowledges that maybe you can’t take much more pain at this particular moment, so just enjoy getting some steps in while binge-watching “The Bear” in your pajamas and call that your workout. For people battling the common barriers to exercise, the answer could be yes, says Alex Montoye, assistant professor of clinical exercise physiology at Alma College in Michigan.
“It fits in with a lot of what we know about how to get people to actually maintain behavior change,” Sanderson says. “It was the yoga pose of the day — really, really hard yoga poses,” Im says. More recently, she sees people pushing themselves to make the leaderboard in all their Peloton classes or to lose five more pounds.
Alyssa Royse, owner of Rocket Community Fitness in Seattle, has been alternating between full-on workouts at her gym and cozy exercise at home. Some days she switches off the sound on her Peloton and just pedals while watching “the trashiest TV I can find, because it just takes my brain somewhere else.”