Exercise at Home

You don’t need to be a member of a gym or even venture further than your own doorstep to get fit. Exercise at home can be the easiest and cheapest way to get that heart beating and those muscles pumping.

You don’t need any special equipment just yourself and a few items that are found in most homes.

To do cardio exercise at home is easy especially if you have stairs and let’s face it most homes have at least one step. Going up the stairs is one of the most effective cardio exercises that you could do. If you have a flight of stairs in your house try going up and down them for 15 minutes twice a day. Set a quick pace, but not too fast and be sure to hold the banister/hand rail for safety.

This may sound a little boring but put some music on and the time will soon pass. If you keep track of the amount of times that you go up and down you can even try to beat your record each time. If you don’t have a whole flight of stairs but do have a step or two you can step up and down these for 30 minutes a day change the starting foot every 10 steps so that you work each leg evenly.

Interval training using a skipping rope is a great way to exercise at home in your back garden. The idea of interval training is to do a short burst of high intensity exercise followed by a short burst of slower activity. Using a skipping rope try skipping as fast as you can for one minutes then jog on the spot for two minutes repeat this process six times.

The fitter you get the more repetitions you will be able to do, steadily increase it each week. Interval training has been proven to be one of the best methods of fat burning. Make sure you add a 10 minute warm up to the beginning of the workout and a 10 minute cool down to the end.

A warm up should include some gradual aerobic exercise and some stretches. For example start with a march on the spot and increase the speed of your march into a comfortable jog over a period of about three minutes. For the next two minutes bring in the arms perhaps with a few low level punching moves.

When you have been active for five minutes you body will have warmed up enough and you should stretch out your muscles for a further five minutes. Make sure you stretch each of the major muscle groups e.g. upper legs, lower legs, arms, back including shoulders and neck. When you have finished stretching you can continue with the main part of the workout.

A cool down is very similar to a warm up. Gradually decrease the intensity of the work out that you are doing e. g. if you are running slow down to a jog and then to a walk over a period of about five or ten minutes. Follow with some more stretches as with the warm up remember to stretch out all of the major muscle groups. Hold each stretch for about 10 seconds.

Muscle toning exercises can be easily done in the home. You don’t need any equipment to do push ups, lunges, sit ups etc. If you want to do arm exercises at home and don’t have any weights try filling plastic milk bottles with water or using tins of beans.

As you can see exercise at home can be very simple and free. Just improvise and experiment a bit, most of all have fun doing it.