The American Council on Exercise has compiled a list of fitness trends for 2010. Though nothing stood out as drastically different from ’09, there are a few trends I thought worthy of extra page time:

• Budget-friendly Workouts at home and at the gym: The economy has left many gym-goers wondering if the monthly membership fees are worth it. Are there a lot of bells and whistles at your gym that you don’t take advantage of, and probably never will? Perhaps a scaled down version of your gym, at half the price, is a better option for you. Another alternative is to beef up your home gym, or start one from scratch, and shuck the gym altogether. Believe it or not, you can stock your gym for well under $500 with simple equipment that performs multiple functions (think stability ball that doubles as a weight bench, and a kettlebell that can be used for single muscle group isolation exercises, as well as total body training for functional movements.

• Getting more done in less time with higher-intensity workouts. I’m a huge fan of bootcamp-style fitness classes, as well as time-efficient circuits. The potential to burn gobs of calories in either of these formats (highlight each) is huge, and both formats lend themselves well to shorter workouts – perfect for lunch-hour fitness, or a quick workout on the way home from work.

• Health and Fitness Awareness. This is a trend I think (hope) is here to stay. In that case, it won’t be a trend for long. Scan any magazine or newspaper, either in print or online, and the number of studies linking healthy living to reduced risk/incidence of disease are abundant. My motto: “you can never go wrong living a healthy lifestyle.” And when you know the ramifications of living an unhealthy lifestyle, then you can’t say, “wow, I just didn’t know.!” You can’t avoid knowing…go grab a magazine, any magazine, newspaper, whatever, and you’ll see what I mean.