In today’s fast paced era many people struggle to cope with every aspect of their life and unfortunately in their daily hustle they forget to take care of themselves. As a result obesity, stress and depression have become more prevalent.
Moreover, with individuals spending more time working from home today, very few take out time to religiously train their body and monitor their food consumption. However, in order to keep your body fit you don’t have to visit the gym regularly and calculate your every meal because working out at home is also as efficient.
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When a perfect plan is plotted and executed correctly, you can train your body just fine with your body weight. Therefore, if hitting the gym everyday is not your thing or maybe you don’t have time and accessibility, but you still want to pursue a healthy life then get ready to sweat yourself at home.
Check out these Tips From Fitness Experts – How To get Started
Check Out These 9 Easy Yet Effective Exercises That You Can Do At Home
These 9 easy yet effective exercises detailed below can be done by anyone and without any equipment, while assuring that each and every muscle of the body is trained.
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INCHWORM EXERCISE
This is essentially a warm up exercise, as it provides little benefits to everything and gets the blood flowing. This makes it a great way to start your routine.
Some benefits of inchworm exercise:
- A great warm up exercise and can be included in HIIT(high intensity interval training as well)
- strengthen muscles and revs up cardio vascular system
- Engages stabilising muscles.
DIRECTIONS-
- Stand tall with keeping feet hip-width apart and keep your core tight.
- Take a deep breath in, while exhaling start reaching your hands towards floor in front of your feet, allow your back to bend forward and knees to bend as needed.
- Place your hand on floor in front of your feet. Inhale and walk forward with your hands, one at a time, straighten your body. Now you should be in straight plank position and your hands should be under your shoulders.
- Now walk back with your hands in reverse direction one step at a time, keeping your legs straight and return to starting position.
Aim to warm up your whole body with this single exercise by repeating the movement 12-15 times, recommended sets 2-3.
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BODYWEIGHT SQUATS
Bodyweight squats is one exercise that should be an inevitable part of any workout regime because they directly target the muscles of legs i.e. quadriceps, hamstrings, calves along with that it also trains glutes (butt muscles) and abs.
Squats are very effective exercise when done with a proper form, some of the benefits include
- It improves your overall posture, flexibility, and strengthens joints and tendons.
- Helps you to walk fast, jump higher and increases your range of motion.
- It tones your butt and strengthens the lower back.
- It improves circulation in lower body and helps you burn fat faster.
DIRECTIONS –
- Stand and keep your feet shoulder width apart, with toes slightly turned outward. Keep your core (abs) tight and eyes straight.
- Slowly inhale, bend at knees and start going down until your thighs are almost parallel to floor, your feet should stay flat and your knees should not pass your toes.
- Keeping your back straight and chest lifted, exhale and push your body upwards, do not move your feet.
- Repeat the movement 10 times. Recommended sets 3.
You can gradually increase the number of set or repetition as your legs become stronger with time.
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PUSH UPS
Push ups are one of the easiest movements once mastered, when executed properly it includes nearly every muscle in body as it is a compound exercise.
If you are sceptical about including this exercise in your home work out regime then think again because it provides much more than just enhanced strength and toned muscles.
- It enhances endurance and improves overall muscle definition.
- It stretches major muscles in body and thus provides flexibility.
- Enhances cardiovascular system and improves posture.
- It saves time as whole body is trained with one simple movement.
DIRECTIONS –
- Take plank position keep your hands slightly wider than shoulders and your body parallel. Your butt should not stick upward and form an arch.
- Keep your core tight and slowly lower your body until your chest nearly touches the floor.
- Pause and then push yourself back upwards.
- Repeat the movement 10 times. Recommended sets 3. (increase as your body becomes stronger)
If you cannot perform traditional push up try KNEE PUSHUP which a beginner style push up, in this variation just keep your knees touched to ground for support and perform the above movement by keeping the body straight.
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BURPEES
Burpees are considered as brutal bodyweight exercise as it requires much strength to execute this movement. However, benefits from this single exercise are astonishing as it burns fat faster and build muscles at same time.
Some benefits of burpees
- It is a full body exercise, it works and builds most major muscles of body ( arms, back, chest, core, glutes and legs)
- It improves you coordination, balance and also increase cardio vascular endurance.
- They burn more calories thus helps you burn fat lot faster
- Improves mobility and flexibility
DIRECTIONS –
- Stand straight, drop into squat position with your hand placed on ground in front of your feet.
- Kick your feet behind you, keeping your arms extended and on floor so you will be in push up position.
- Jump your feet in forward direction back to your hand.
- Lastly throw yourself up taking a leap in the air with your arms above you.
Repeat the movement 10 times. Recommended sets 3 increase as your body becomes stronger with time.
Once you become familiar with movement you can try other variations of burpee as well to level up the difficulty, like chest to floor burpee, burpee pull up etc.
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MOUNTAIN CLIMBERS (Running planks)
The concept behind this exercise is mimicking the tough movement of climbing mountain, only the mountain here is floor. This movement trains nearly entire body and revs up the heart rate.
Some benefits of mountain climbers
- This exercise is great for building cardio vascular endurance, agility and core strength.
- It is a compound movement thus it effectively trains your shoulder, arms, chest and other major muscles.
- It also strengthens quads and increases the core stability.
- It burns calories faster and thus helps in fat reduction.
DIRECTIONS-
- Get into plank position, keep your hands straight shoulder width apart and distribute your weight between your hands and toes.
- Keep your back straight, core tight and head aligned.
- Pull your right knee towards your chest as far as you can, then switch by bringing the other knee in
- Keep your hips down and repeat the movement as fast as you can, while inhaling and exhaling with each leg change.
Do this exercise continuously for 30-45 seconds and slowly increase your time. Repeat this 3-4 times. You can also try variations like sliding mountain climbers, standing mountain climbers to level up the difficulty.
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LUNGES
Lunges are very effective in building strength and toning the body and improve overall fitness. They are ideal home exercise as it builds endurance and increases the mobility and requires no equipments to perform.
Some benefits of Lunges
- Lunges act upon large muscles of the lower body and build them, and in this process it burns a huge amount of calories.
- The single leg movement involved in lunge activates stabilizing muscles and develop balance and coordination.
- Improves your range of motion and thus helps you in making your everyday movement smoother.
- It provides strong core and increases flexibility.
DIRECTIONS-
- Stand tall keep your feet hip width apart. Keeping your torso straight take a big step forward with right leg, land the heel on ground first.
- Lower your body until right thigh is parallel to the floor, the knee should not pass the toe while bending, while keeping weight on right foot lightly tap left knee on floor.
- Press the right heel and force back to starting position.
- Repeat the same movement with left leg.
You can do lunges with a great number of variation such as walking lunges, stationary lunges, side lunges, reverse lunges etc. all of them have more or less similar effect.
Initially perform 10-12 reps for each leg. Recommended sets 3-4, increase as you feel stronger.
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BICYCLE CRUNCHES
Bicycle crunch is one of the best exercises that you can do to involve each and every abs muscle including deep abs and obliques. This is a great beginner’s exercise that you can do easily anywhere and without equipment.
Some benefits of bicycle crunches
- It is a great exercise to tone you abdominal muscles and also your thighs as you will raise your legs and move them forward and backwards.
- A strong core gives you a good posture and helps you in performing your daily task with little ease.
- It is also effective exercise in burning fat as it requires lot of energy to perform.
DIRECTIONS-
- Lie flat on the floor with your back pressed on ground and keep your knees bent, your feet on floor and hands behind your head.
- Contract your core, slowly raise your knees. Exhale and slowly just as bicycle pedalling motion bring right knee up towards your shoulder, while keeping the other leg straight and elevated.
- Rotate your lifted torso so that elbow (left) can touch the opposite knee (right) as it comes up.
- Alternate this twist to other side while maintaining the pace.
Aim for 15-20 reps for each leg or 30-45 seconds initially. Recommended sets 3 increase your time or reps as you feel stronger.
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PLANK
Plank pose is essentially a yoga pose which is widely recommended by professionals as it works on all major abdominal muscle, while strengthening your shoulder, chest, legs, and back muscles. This pose works on muscles by just holding the steady position.
Some Benefits of plank pose
- Strengthens your core and increases muscle definition.
- Kicks metabolism and burns fat efficiently.
- Gives you better posture and improves stability and balance.
- Enhances mood and act as stress reliever technique.
DIRECTIONS-
- Position your arms perpendicular to floor and elbows directly below your shoulders.
- Maintain a rigid body line from your head to spine to butt, do not form arch near lower back to keep the core engaged.
- Hold this position to the failure.
Aim to hold this position for at least 30 sec in beginning and gradually increase time as your strength increases.
Challenge yourself with tougher versions like side plank, extended plank, reverse plank etc.
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WALL SITS
The wall sit is an isometric exercise where you hold one position to engage multiple muscles of your body. It proves to be excellent home workout exercise as it is simple to execute and has vast number of benefits, some of which are
- It engages your core as well as your leg muscles especially that of your thighs and calves.
- Helps in building strength and increases your focus.
- Increases your stamina and burns more calories.
DIRECTIONS-
- Start by keeping your back against wall and your feet shoulder width apart, about 2 feet from the wall.
- Keep your core tight and slowly slide your back downwards until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Make sure your knee should not pass your toes.
- Keep you back flat and eyes straight.
- Hold the position for 45-60 seconds.
Aim to hold position for as long as you can and repeat 3-4 times.
The bottom line
Bodyweight exercise can be useful for anyone who wants to level up their fitness without visiting gym or sparing much time. Moreover, they are convenient and can be executed with no equipments.
Thus, it makes these exercises ideal for the beginners who can start with such regime and gradually motivate themselves to level up after observing the jump in their endurance.
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