Sustainable fitness: 5 tips for more environmentally friendly training

You can also make your finess routine sustainably and deliberately do without climate -damaging products. We present five tips that make your workout more environmentally and climate-friendly.

Climate systems, electrically operated fitness equipment, elaborate lighting in gyms and highly processed animal protein drinks – the conventional fitness industry is often backward in terms of sustainability. Fitness studios in particular that are open around the clock record high energy consumption. In order to no longer support this trend, you can switch to environmentally friendly alternatives that are even cheaper.

Tip 1: Train outside or at home

Fitness studios can maintain their energy -intensive measures if they are still financed by sufficient members. You can train your physical fitness in an energy-saving way without gym membership:

• You don’t need a treadmill for endurance training: you can best jog, walks or cycling in the fresh air. With the right equipment, this is not a problem even in winter or when it rains. Slow jogging is particularly gentle on the joints.
• You can also do strength training with the help of homeworkouts far from the gym: either you do it at home or use public green spaces. You don’t need much more than a mat. You can find inspiration for this here: Workout at home: ideas for sport in your own four walls
• In many cities there are now so-called outdoor gyms: Here you can let off steam on devices free of charge in the fresh air, use the arms, back, legs and stomach-without any power consumption.

Tip 2: Buy sustainable sports equipment

The production of fitness equipment already consumes high amounts of energy and therefore releases many CO2 emissions. If you want to buy additional equipment for your outdoor or home workout, you should also consider some tips:

• Not only environmentally friendly, but also inexpensive is second-hand goods. On online portals you can easily find dumbbells, yoga mats, fitness balls and other aids that were already in use but are still functional. By using them further, you save valuable resources. For hygienic reasons, you should thoroughly clean and disinfect the products before use.
• It is even more environmentally friendly if you do without additional aids in the sports routine. After all, you can also effectively train with body weight exercises, a high repetition number and the right workout combination.
• Sports clothes in particular contain a lot of microplastics because the material should be particularly breathable and stretchy. If you wash your clothes, the microparticles it contains get into the water. To prevent this with plastic, you can buy a guppyfriend. This collects the microcastic so that you can dispose of it in the right waste bin.

Tip 3: Care for the longest possible lifespan

Even with low-emission DIY dumbbells there is a central problem: it is made of plastic, accordingly cannot be biodegradable and difficult to dispose of. Therefore, make sure to handle your fitness equipment carefully to ensure the longest possible lifespan.

• If you no longer want to use certain tools, but are still usable, you can also sell them on online portals or flea markets, give away to friends: inside or place on streets and paths on gift boxes and shelves.
• If you have to dispose of fitness devices, you should find out beforehand (preferably directly from your municipality) where the corresponding materials belong. It is best to bring products such as treadles, cross trainers and dumbbells directly to the recycling center.

Tip 4: Buy sustainable and fair sports clothing

The problems of the conventional textile industry can also be found in the area of ​​sports clothing: Tree -making clothes are often produced under inhumane working conditions in distant countries, cover long transport routes to Germany and, after their use, land on landfill instead of recycling. The EU alone causes 12.6 million tons of textile waste every year. You can find out more about this here: Doku tip: Fast fashion-The dark world of cheap fashion

In order to no longer promote these grievances, you can fall back on fair fashion labels. For example, these use more environmentally friendly materials, some of them produce their clothes in Europe and ensure fairer working conditions. We present recommended brands in these articles: Sustainable sports fashion: The best brands and organic cotton & recycled PET: Where can I buy sustainable sports bras?

As an inexpensive alternative, you can also rely on second-hand goods for sports clothing. If you wash the things before you use it for the first time, you have no hygienic problems.

Tip 5: Avoid conventional fitness food

The fitness industry benefits from the demand for protein drinks, bars and other highly processed products, which mostly contain animal whey protein. Molken protein arises from the cheese production from the whey. But you should be careful when it comes to origin, because “Made in Germany” does not necessarily mean that the ingredients also come from Germany. A market check from the consumer advice center has shown that information on the valuable ingredients such as whey protein or vitamins are often missing. Most of the time, “Made in Germany” only means that the product has been mixed here, while the ingredients come from distant countries with cheaper production costs.

In addition, the milk usually comes from factory farming in non-bio-certified products, which not only leads to high greenhouse gas emissions (in particular methane), but also to considerable animal suffering. Another problem is the packaging.