Fitness never changes. Exercise is timeless and what works today, will work in 100 years’ time.

But that isn’t to say that there aren’t fitness trends that come and go. In fact there are tons ofthem – and not all of them are bad. Some are marketing ploys sure but others provide us with interesting and fun ways to get in shape and bring positive attention to health and wellness in general.

Below are three of the most recent workout trends. Let’s analyze each one to see what fitness looks like 2019 and which new crazes are worth your time.

Constant Heartrate Monitoring

Serious runners and athletes have been wearing heart rate monitors on their chests for a while now but it’s only in the last year that we’ve seen constant heart rate monitoring come to more commercial, wrist-worn fitness trackers like the Microsoft Band and the Fitbit Charge HR.

This upgrade in technology is likely to lead to continued growth for the fitness tracking industry in general . That’s because it’s much more insightful than simply looking at how many steps you’ve taken on a given day and can show you things like how well recovered you are (via heartrate variability) and how well you’ve slept.

MovNat

MovNat is the natural next evolution of fitness in light of the move towards ‘functional’ strength and natural movement. MovNat is about trail running, doing pull ups from trees and lifting big logs around. In other words, it’s about going back to your roots so that you can train the way your body was designed to.

It’s a great idea in theory and the likes of Ido Portal are a good advert for this type of fitness. At the same time though, not everyone has the luxury of wide open forests and mountains to train in – or the appropriate weather. Likewise, it’s not going to give you massive biceps so if that’s what you’re after, then this is one to pass on.

Barrecore

Barrecore is a fitness class that lasts for one hour and which combines bodyweight resistance exercise with dance. It’s aimed more at the female crowd looking to tone muscle and burn fat and it’s not exactly going to be challenging for bodybuilders and athletes. What do we think of this workout? Well as it goes, it’s actually a pretty good one. Dance is a great choice because it’s fun and because it’s good cardio. Bodyweight resistance is good because it tones muscle and because combining resistance and cardio (known as ‘concurrent training’) actually burns more calories and more fat than doing CV on its own. Choosing bodyweight, resistance bands and very light dumbbells means that the workout stays light and accessible for beginners and most women are likely to see some good results from this one as a result!