I don't know about you, but I've already broken into a cold sweat because I've got a workout scheduled this upcoming Thursday and the gym doors will be shut to all of us, hungover and abstinent alike. All those holiday-hours at the gym reminded of a story I heard as a kid, recounted by the great comedian Stephen Wright: 

A few nights ago I needed a smoke so I went to this store that I knew was open 24 hours. When I got there, there was a guy outside locking it up. He said, "Sorry, we're closed." I said, "What do you mean, you're closed, the sign says 'Open 24 Hours'!" and he said, "Not in a row." 

I used to think this was hilarious, but now there's a gym called "24 Hour Fitness" which has pretty much the same hours as the US Post Office, making Wright's absurdist joke into a fully accepted reality. Remind me to open a hamster exhibit called "The Wonderful World of Centaurs and Unicorns." 
 
Let's face it, gyms close at inopportune times, including this Thursday, and that's a terrible timing, if you ask me, seeing as any gym rat worth his creatine monohydrate would want to put in a good hour of sweat on New Year's Day, either to get a head start on his 2009 fitness goals or to wring the last toxins of 2008 forever out of his system. 
 
So, assuming you don't have a tricked-out garage gym (I don't either), and assuming you don't want to do a long run or ride, either because it's too cold or because you'd sooner die than spend a workout-hour on such nonsense, what's to be done? 
 
One possibility is to attack the standard body-weight exercises with a vengeance, as I've suggested before, and that's a perfectly acceptable option. But this New Year's Day I want to suggest something different: randomness. 
 
I love strength training and everything, but sometimes it can get to feel a little...regimented. As if instead of learning to converse, you were just practicing your ABC's over and over. You're mastering the elements of a skill while never touching the whole. 
 
In a way, strength-training can be seen as practice for the movements of life: squats make you better at rising from a chair; farmer's walks make you better at carrying groceries, and on and on. Your body doesn't know that the real reason you're bench pressing is to impress Janine in accounts receivable; it thinks your survival depends on your getting better at pushing heavy objects off your chest. The extra contractile tissue you pack on in the process is just a happy side effect. 
 
The bench press, the squat, the deadlift, the row--as complex as these movements are, they're a drop in the ocean compared to the complex movements we perform throughout the day as a matter of course: sure, deadlifts are a complicated move, but no more so than the twisting-overhead-grocery-put-away or the perilous Reach-out-your-Car-Window-to-get-the-Mail-while-keeping-your-Foot-on-the- 
Brake. 
 
What you're really doing when you strength train is rehearsing some of life's more common movements in the hopes that when that pattern, or something like it, happens to pop up in your life, you're going to be able to do it with a little more ease, speed, and efficiency. It's rehearsal--it's not the thing itself. 
 
Hence the need for randomness: exercise that doesn't repeat for dozens of reps at a time, where you have to improvise moment to moment. 
 
If you don't play a team sport--probably the ultimate random workout--a great way to create randomness is to go out and design yourself a mini obstacle course that challenges the upper and lower body, your balance, explosive strength, strength-endurance and anaerobic endurance for 1-2 minutes at a stretch, then repeat it up to ten times for a seriously tough and fun workout. Kids' parks--with their monkey bars, climbing ladders, chin-up bars, stairs and the like are ideal locations for this kind of thing--just make sure you go before the kids arrive--otherwise, you know, it's weird. 

 
What else could you do? Run as fast as you can for one minute, do pushups as fast as you can for 30 seconds. Run for another minute, do some squat-thrusts for 30 seconds. If you encounter a tree while you're out there, grab a low branch and crank out some pull-ups. Leap over every park bench you see. Repeat for 20 minutes and call me when you wake up from your coma. 
 
More and more trainers are recommending throwing these types of workouts into a standard, periodized workout routine: John Berardi does them with his charges; Jim Smith talks about randomness in Combat Core Strength; CrossFit devotees consider it a cornerstone of their program. Random workouts (and they're called other things) are popular in part because they build athleticism and endurance while burning loads of fat, but largely because they're just bontoons of fun. 

 
And you don't even need that gym with the misleading name.