New Brunswick — If you’ve been bombarded by sponsored ads for workout apps and exercise programs over the first few days of the new year, you’re not alone!
To spare you the effort of researching the regimen suited to you and your resolutions, we’ve compiled the best of these programs that you wouldn’t complete even if you had all the time, equipment, space and money in the world and absolutely all obstacles to achieving peak performance were removed.
- Beachbody: Order the swag, download the app, share your big plans on social media to join Team Beachbody. This workout system may be awesome, but nothing feels as awesome as hitting the snooze button on a freezing January morning and going back to sleep. Maybe next year.
- Burn360: You won’t make it past downloading this app. Seriously, all the good intentions in the world won’t matter when you get up tomorrow, the house is cold, you’re exhausted, and think, “What’s so wrong with being flabby?” The stars would really have to align for this one, which calls itself a “21-Day Metabolic Reset.” Whatever the hell that means.
- The 6-Week Sweat Challenge: These high-intensity workouts by Kayla Itsines offer versions with or without equipment, from beginner to advanced. A 7-day free trial of the Sweat app won’t be nearly enough to make you get your fat ass off the couch, though. Pass the Cheetos.
- Bowflex: This isn’t so much a fitness program as a series of products you have to buy with the money left over from CERB (ha!). The ads for this brand tell you to “take care of your mind and body this holiday season.” Well, the holidays are over, and so is the Bowflex system.
- Arena Strength: These are literally just thick elastic bands you wear around your thighs that are meant to shape your butt and legs. Obviously, you won’t use them more than once before they’re relegated to the junk drawer, but “125,000+ women” can’t be wrong…right? All the PROVEN exercises, FREE workout guides and HEALTHY recipes on the planet will not be motivation enough to use these damned things.
- The Belle Bod: It probably sounds like we’re making these up at this point, but unfortunately, these are as real as the extra 20 pounds you gained over the last few months of quarantining. This one tells you to “sculpt your body at home” with unlimited access to virtual Barre, Strength, and HIIT workouts. The mere notion of doing this one definitely makes us want to HIIT the Barre.
- Crossrope: This is a jump-rope workout program that promises to banish “boring” cardio routines…because jumping rope for hours on end couldn’t be boring, after all. If you’re totally deluded about who you are as a person, sure, get all set up for this. But come on…you could live to be as old as Methuselah and you’re never, ever going to do more than a few hops, skips and jumps.
- 80 Day Obsession BOOTY challenge: This bitch Autumn Calabrese (why do their names always sound so fake?) really wants you to dedicate 80 days of your remaining time on Earth to do 80 different workouts…all targeting your “booty,” which is already the year’s most annoying fitness-related word. Kiss our booty, Autumn.
This concludes our top 8 workouts that you will never do, ever, even if the circumstances are ideal. We recommended just eating some more vegetables, drinking plenty of water, and going for a walk now and then — all probably more effective than any of these bullshit programs, products and apps.