Binge-Worthy Workouts for Binge Watching

If your idea of a marathon conjures images of cozy blankets, a remote control, and buttered popcorn, we suspect you enjoy binge watching. Who doesn’t? We’d be fibbing if we said we never whiled away three or four hours watching back-to-back episodes of our favorite new show (or our favorite old one).

It may not be the world’s best habit, but binge watching can work for your health, rather than against it. These workouts help you burn calories while you watch.

Warming up before exercise is a truly amazing thing. You get your body prepared for exercise success, avoid injury, and start getting exercise benefits before you’re half trying. How great is that? You’ve barely gotten started, and you’re already killing it.

You can warm up by loosening up your muscles, doing some light walking or jogging in place, and through dynamic stretching—like walking lunges, high knees, or leg stretches.

These easy-to-follow workouts strengthen your lower body while burning fat and calories. And you can do them easily without taking too much of your attention off the action on screen. Some call for light hand weights or steps, but if you don’t have those handy, feel free to improvise.

Push ups are a classic workout most of us have been doing since elementary school. All push ups strengthen your chest, shoulder, and tricep muscles. But there are many variations you can take advantage of, just by changing your position.

Planks are isometric core exercises you do by holding a given position for a period of seconds or minutes. Most take no equipment, and since your only job is to hold your position, they’re easy to do while you’re glued to a suspenseful scene.

Here are 20 variations to strengthen your abs, hips, and spine.

If you’ve got any energy—or episodes—left, try moving from strength to cardio. Whether it’s jogging in place, doing jumping jacks, skipping rope, or riding an exercise bike, it’s all a little more interesting when you’re watching something you love.

And you’ll be in that much better shape when the good weather returns, and you can get out there and get active.