Everyone has experienced the awkward situation where you are walking through the gym and you feel the judgmental eyes of thirty people beating down on you. The intimidation of working out in front of people becomes too much to handle and you cut your workout day short.

   Teenagers have little time to focus on exercising these days with extra curriculars and piles of homework. A frequent gym visitor junior Meghan James experienced this first-hand and said, “I love going to the gym, but sometimes with homework, it’s too much of a pain to go all the way to the gym for a workout.” The expenses of gyms are also a big problem for students with little or no income, and the machines are sometimes full or unsanitary.

In the new world of social media sites coming out everyday, one site was bound to be taken over by workout routines that can easily be done in the comfort of your own home.

The up and coming social network , Pinterest, is like a virtual corkboard that lays out people’s interests. The public pins their ideas and re-pin others that inspire them. Popular posts, like workout pins, get hundreds of repins each day. Not to mention the site is free, making it more appealing than expensive gym memberships.

Pinterest created a fun way of doing the daily requirements of physical activity that doesn’t deal with the awkward situation in gyms. People invent and pin daily workout routines that everyone can do in the comfort of their own home. They even created movie-themed routines, such as a Harry Potter, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story, The Hangover, and a Mean Girls Workout. In the Harry Potter routine, every time a spell is cast, for example, you would have to do ten jumping jacks. Many people visit these pins like freshman Courtney McCarthy, who said, “I’ve seen a Dance Moms one!”

For the majority of the population on Pinterest, these are the most popular ways to exercise. You can get your required sixty minutes of exercise by doing just one of these activities. And doing any form of workout with friends makes everything more enjoyable.  People have started throwing parties surrounding the themes of these routines.  Freshman Grace Strong said, “It’s fun if you do it with a bunch of people.” To make the routines more interesting, freshman Ellen Foley said “it could be a competition.”

This fun new way of exercising sparked a workout movement, especially in teens. Pinterest uses the social networks to communicate healthy ways of living to the younger generation and created unique ways to make exercising less boring and intimidating. Who would want to spend useless time and money on a gym, when you have your own unique way of getting physically active with Pinterest workouts?