When it comes to exercise, we talk a lot about paying attention to what you're doing. It's important to connect with your body and your workouts, to pay attention to your form and posture to get the most out of your workouts.

It's a good idea to do that, especially during weight training where unfocused movements can lead to sloppy form and, at best, an ineffective workout or, at worst, an injury .

But, sometimes, you don't want to pay attention. After a long day or a long week, you've done nothing but pay attention and what you really need is a chance to zone out. Watching TV or mindless Internet surfing is often our first zone-out choice, but exercise is a better one. There's something about the rhythmic, mindless motion of the body that frees the mind, letting it roam where it will.

Everyone zones out differently, but, if you need a little mindlessness, there are some steps that will help you get there:

1. Choose an easy cardio activity - This is any activity you can do without thinking about it. Cardio machines are a good choice here, offering nothing but mindlessness. Outdoor activities can work as well, although you do need to pay more attention to your surroundings - Traffic, potholes, other exercisers, dog poop, etc.
2. Work at a comfortable intensity - The next step to zoning out is to find that pace that feels so natural, you could do it all day. It shouldn't be so easy that you're trudging along, nor should it be so hard that all you can think about is how much longer you have to workout. Keep adjusting your speed, incline or resistance until you're right in the middle, around Level 5 on this perceived exertion chart .
3. Add music - Music is a great way to zone out...adding background noise can minimize distractions and keep your energy up. Motion Traxx podcasts are a great option here, offering music at different beats per minute that let you work at a solid pace without having to think about it.
4. Let your mind go - You may find yourself directing your thoughts at first...what to make for dinner or how to handle that important meeting. Let your mind do its thing. Eventually, you'll find your thoughts wandering to different places, maybe even surprising places. Letting go of directing every thought is just what zoning out is all about - playtime for your mind.

What do you think? Do you ever zone out during your workouts? How do you do it and what do you get out of it? Leave a comment and tell us about zoning out during exercise.

We often look at weight loss as a numbers game . If you burn and/or cut x number of calories from your diet, you should see x number of pounds drop from the scale.

Tracking these numbers can be like a full-time job, writing down and counting the calories we eat, monitoring our exercise intensity and the calories we're burning and, finally, stepping on the scale day after day to see if what we're doing is actually working .

The results can, sometimes, be excruciatingly slow .

When you think about it, what really changes these numbers, or at least the number on the scale, comes down to our choices. The choice to exercise, to eat less, to move more.

These don't always feel like choices, do they? To many of us, they feel like chores, things we must or must not do if we want to lose weight. But, your perspective on weight loss, exercise and diet plays a major role in your success . If these choices feel more like restrictions, you're always going to feel like you're missing out on something and, therefore, you'll always go back to those things you think you're missing.

What if there's a different way? What if these choices weren't chores or restrictions, but based on the decision to take care of yourself? If you think about it, all the things you need to do to lose weight are also all the things you need to do to take care of yourself: Eating when you're hungry, stopping when you're full, eating foods that give you energy and make you feel good. Taking care of yourself means moving your body and getting out of your chair as much as possible, simply because your body feels better when it's moving.

Taking care of yourself means getting enough sleep , drinking enough water , dealing with your stress in healthy ways...all things that, when accomplished, can also lead to healthy, natural weight loss.

Learning how to take care of yourself is an important part of the weight loss process and it starts with:

• Knowing where you are - How well are you taking care of yourself right now? Keep a health journal for a few days and track your sleep, stress levels, exercise, meals, water intake and how you feel in general each day. How are you doing overall and what could you change?
• Checking in with yourself - Taking care of yourself starts with being aware of how you feel throughout the day. This is especially important if you tend to be an emotional eater , reaching for food to deal with stress, boredom, fatigue or loneliness. Set an alarm to go off every hour and take a moment to check in with yourself. Then, ask yourself what you really need right at that moment. Practice giving yourself what you need before giving into emotional eating.

What do you think? Does healthy living feel different when you look at it as a way to take care of yourself? Would you find more success if you focused less on losing weight and more on taking care of yourself? Leave a comment and tell us what you think.

If there's one phrase that inspires dread amongst my clients (and myself, if I'm being honest), it's this: Squat Thrusts . This is the kind of exercise you don't want to think about. Thinking about it is a bit like climbing up the high dive for the first time, looking down at the pool (which is a long, loooong way away) and realizing that you're terrified of heights. And drowning.

The best way to face squat thrusts is to simply do them, realizing that they're hard for a reason: They work every part of your body (legs, arms, core, earlobes) and they raise your heart rate at the same time, a perfect storm of calorie-burning that will take your body to the next level.

Keep in mind that there are many versions of this exercise: Burpees , a very advanced version, or doing them with paper plates or gliding discs which challenge your quads in a whole different way. You can even combine them with Mountain Climbers for a major challenge.

Do this throughout your workout for an intensity boost or combine them with other cardio exercises for a high intensity cardio workout.

Do it right : Stand with feet together. Squat down and place your hands on the floor next to your feet. In an explosive movement, jump feet backwards into a push-up position, jump feet back between hands and continue, jumping the feet out and in as quickly as you can for 30-60 seconds. Add intensity by standing up each time and/or adding a jump as you stand.

One way to tell that spring is officially here (besides all the frolicking one may witness while driving by nearby parks) is by the Hobble Factor. Specifically, the number of my clients hobbling through their workouts with grunts, groans and the occasional bloody-murder scream - a sure sign that they've been overdoing it.

The Hobble Factor kicks in right about the same time we get our first streak of warm days and said clients do the following: Play 18 holes of golf for the first time in a year, spend 8 hours yanking weeks out of various flower beds and go for 9-hour bike rides with legs that haven't pedaled in months.

The Hobble Factor, when combined with a typical workout session, leads to a peak in soreness , a normal response when putting the body through an activity it hasn't done in a long time. While it is normal, being sore all the time is not always an indicator of a good workout .

In fact, if you feel worse the second day after a workout, that's usually a sign you went too far, but there are things you can do to prevent and manage soreness.

Warming up and easing your favorite springtime activities (why not hit the driving range your first day out, for example?) can minimize soreness and anti-inflammatories, hot baths and rest can help manage soreness. One thing that always works for me is a day at the spa with peeled grapes and a bottle of chardonnay, but that's just me.

What about you? How do you handle muscle soreness? Vote in this week's poll and leave a comment telling us your tried and true tricks for dealing with soreness.

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We often exercise and diet with the goal of getting our best bodies. What that boils down to, for many of us, comes down to pieces and parts - A smaller this and a bigger that, more muscle here and less fat there. Appearance is certainly important, but we're often limited in what we can achieve, being at the mercy of the genes we've inherited.

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Climbing a mountain is no easy feat, but what if that mountain is actually the floor? That's the concept of this week's exercise which asks the question: What happens when you get on the floor and run your knees in and out as fast as you can? The obvious follow up to that is to wonder why someone would want to do this and the answer to that is: Because you can (although, if you really can't, I have some variations below).

Mountain climbers are an excellent move for building cardio endurance while also building core strength and agility. This is also a great move when you don't have much (or any) equipment and want a challenging way to work your body.

There are a couple of ways to do this move. One, is to run the knees in and out without touching your toes to the floor. Another is to do the opposite and touch your toes to the floor, making it more of a foot-switch than a run. If this move doesn't agree with you, you can take it slow and simply walk one foot forward into a low lunge, walk it back and switch legs. I also have a gliding disc version that might work for people who need less impact.

Work this into your usual cardio routine or add it to other cardio exercises to make your own high intensity circuit workout.

Do it right : Begin in a pushup position on the hands and toes. Bring the right knee in towards the chest, resting the foot on the floor. Jump up and switch feet in the air, bringing the left foot in and the right foot back. You can also run the knees in and out rather than touching the toes to the floor. Continue alternating the feet as fast as you safely can for 30-60 seconds.

The battle between cardio and strength training , at least the battle that exists in our minds, has been going on for decades. The two actually get along quite well on their own, but add a human to the mix and that's where the conflict comes in.

Whether it's buried somewhere in your genetic code, the type of muscle fibers you have, what you grew up doing, age, gender, experience or all of the above, most of us have one activity we like (or at least tolerate) and one we do because we're supposed to.

There's no doubt you need both to lose weight and get fit but many of us, if given a choice, would easily give up our least favorite if we could get away with it.

While cardio and strength training can overlap, thinking of the differences between them, it's easy to see why some of us would prefer one over the other. With cardio, there's the endurance factor: Breathing hard, sweating, having to sustain a certain level of discomfort for, sometimes, long periods of time. For some? This can feel like torture. For others, there's nothing better than a long cardio workout to blow some stink off.

With strength training, you have the burn factor: After a few reps, providing you have enough weight, a burning sensation starts deep in the muscles and, the longer you lift, the worse it gets. For some people, this can feel like torture, while others love focusing on their muscles, feeling them contract, imagining them getting stronger.

Thinking about your workouts, about the differences between cardio and strength training, which one do you prefer? Would you happily give up one over the other? Or perhaps you like them both in certain ways? Vote in this week's poll and tell us what you think about cardio and strength training.

We're often so ready for spring to get here that we forget one important thing: Our bodies often aren't ready for it. It's not just the extra activity that can cause problems (like the general feeling that our bodies grew muscles we've never had before), but it's other things that sneak up on us like allergies , drawers full of workout clothes that stink/don't fit/have holes in them and the variable weather - Warm and sunny one day, cold and rainy the next.

I've got a couple of resources to help with the soreness and allergies:

• Exercising With Allergies - The American College of Sports Medicine offers some basic tips for exercising during allergy season. Here's one I didn't know: Breathe through your nose as much as you can when you exercise because "The nasal passages act as natural filters and humidifiers." Guess you want to avoid sprints on a bad allergy day.
• Preventing Sports Injuries - It's easy to overdo it this time of year. In fact, I've already had two clients out with back injuries from overzealous gardening. Our Sports Medicine Guide offers some tips to avoid that and you might want to think about working on your flexibility and core strength if you'll be doing a lot of yard work. Marie, our Guide to Gardening, also offers some great exercises for gardeners .

I can't do anything about the weather (except complain about it, which I do incessantly), but I do have an updated list of Spring Fitness Essentials , which can help you update your wardrobe to accommodate crazy spring weather with top picks for clothes, shoes, socks and other top picks for both men and women.

Exercising at home has a few advantages. One is the ability to put on your workout clothes and walk a few feet to your workout space, which is much simpler than driving all the way to the gym.

Also, you can do all kinds of things at home that you can't do at the gym - Watch movies on your big screen TV, listen to your music as loud as you want (even sign to it, if you're so inclined) and do pushups with your cat or dog 'helping' (read: Sprawling under your face or crouching on your back, beyond excited that you've come down to the floor to play with them)...something frowned upon at the gym.

There are some disadvantages too - Motivating yourself to exercise instead of doing other chores or tasks, lack of equipment variety and, of course, the fact that your (soft, warm, cozy) bed is located so close to your (stark, cold, exercisey) home gym, that you often find it hard to traverse that small distance.

Another tough one is figuring out how to get in your cardio.

This is a no-brainer if you have cardio machines or like to go outside, but, if you don't, you may find this a real challenge.

There are some options, of course: Exercise videos or movements that require no space and very little equipment like jumping jacks, jump rope, walking/jogging in place and the overhead cat toss (not recommended for the inexperienced exerciser...or cat). The problem with those exercises is that they're not as sustainable as, say, getting on an elliptical or going for a walk or run. You can only run in place or do jumping jacks for so long before you either get too winded or too bored.

What may work for you in this situation is to choose 10 or so cardio movements (check out these 10 minute timesaver workouts for more ideas), and doing each for 60 seconds, taking walking breaks in between as needed. You can complete 1 or more circuits, putting together the perfect cardio workout for you.

That's just one option and I've got a few more, if you need some ideas:

Home Cardio Resources

• Step by Step - Home Cardio Exercises
• Advanced Cardio Blast Workout
• Step by Step - Low Impact Cardio Exercises
• Low Impact Cardio Challenge
• Jump Rope Circuit
• Boot Camp Workout

What about you? What's your favorite way to do cardio at home? Do you use machines, videos or do you have go-to exercises to make your own workouts? Leave a comment and tell us about your home cardio workouts.