Baranta: Sometimes there are horses.
Swinging bowling pins perilously close to your head? Check. Human hamster wheel? Sure. Professional wheelbarrow racing teams? We’ve got that.
Still taking stand-up paddleboarding classes? That's so last year — even your muscles are tired of that crap. Once your mom gets in on the hot new exercise trend, you definitely know it's time to try something new. (We won’t tell anyone that you sneak into Jazzercise after the sun goes down.)
If you want to get ahead of the curve and be the envy of all your friends, take up one of these workouts. You’ll burn some calories and also bask in the satisfaction of being superior to everyone you know.
Baranta: Hungary (the country, not how you feel) hasn’t always been on the cutting edge of trends...until now. Baranta is a new martial art focusing on traditional folk dancing and sport. Thanks to the Atlantic magazine, I can now imagine 6th grade PE classes of the future doing square dancing in the style of Bruce Lee. Trust me when I say this will be the Zumba of 2016 (or maybe 2017). Cool bonus factor: wooden axes.
Hula: No, not another dance trend. I’m talking about the hula hoop. In the immortal words of Tim Robbins in The Hudsucker Proxy, it’s a circle. "You know, for kids." Some hotels offer special fitness classes for the hula hooper (though I only learned about this because one of these hotels was on a show where professionals helped them stay in business). The downside? Hooping only allows you to only exercise one part of your body, but at least you'll have a great core.
Getting Comfortable: You know how you twist and turn at night when you just can’t fall asleep? Now you can channel all that anxiety and frustration into measurable fitness. Official classes haven’t been licensed yet, so you can be the first. Start-up will be cheap — just grab some sprung mattresses off to the side of the road. Think of all the people out there tired of dealing with snoring partners — they’ve got plenty of practice, and they'll be lining up to flip and flop in the bright light of the gym.
Go Old School: Everything old is new again, and any exercise featured in a black-and-white photo can be revived for your use — let this collection serves as inspiration. Swinging bowling pins perilously close to your head? Check. Human hamster wheel? Sure. Professional wheelbarrow racing teams? We’ve got that. Old-timey exercises prove that CrossFit was not new as far as making people do weird shit and calling it exercise. So why stop there? If you need a new roof, invite some people over, yell at them, and make them work for hours on end. Presto! You’ve got a fitness trend, fresh from the past, and a house with no leaks for the next time it rains.
