Contrary to what a lot of people may think, you don’t need a gym membership to exercise and keep fit. Believe it or not, you can have a seriously effective workout in your own home with very little exercise equipment at all. People very often use the lack of time to get to a gym as their excuse for getting out of shape or losing their fitness. Fair enough, we are all time poor these days and with all of our commitments like work, travel, family time, recreation & study to name a few. The thing is, we are all affected by the lack of time. We need to remember that we do need to come home every day and I do believe we can all find 20 minutes for exercise time somewhere. Afterall, we spend a lot more time watching TV or on a device to be fair. You don’t need a lot of space at all. In fact, a space of 2m x 2m is all that is required. Some other things that you could use for a complete home workout are as follows….
- Dining or other regular chair
- Exercise / Yoga mat
- Swiss Ball
- Kettlebell – depending on your size and strength anywhere from 8kg to 16kg is all you need to start with
- Elastic Resistance Bands – these can be bought from Rebel or online exercise retailers. I would suggest buying a couple of different resistances – light, medium and heavy.
- Timer – There a many good free workout timer apps available for iPhone and Android phones.
To get the most out of your workout, I recommend using an interval based training system. What is interval based training? Basically, any workout involving a series of different exercises done within a particular time interval. For example a simple interval based training workout could be the following..
- 1 minute body weight squats (with or without chair)
- 1 minute crunches
- 1 minute pushups
- 1 minute jogging on the spot
This circuit would be completed followed by a rest period of anywhere from 30 seconds to 3 minutes. You would ideally perform the entire circuit 3-5 times. The benefits of this type of training is that you are getting both strength and cardio-vascular effects to your workout which is what you want for overall fitness. There are no rules about what combinations of exercises you choose to do and you can change the exercises as often as you like.
I have put together a slightly more challenging 4 exercise interval training workout which you could try initially for 3 rounds, with a 2 minute rest in between rounds.
Medium Intensity Routine
- 1 minute sumo squat with kettlebell
- 1 minute bridging/hip thrusters
- 1 min crunch
- 1 min jumping jacks
Complete this entire routine 3 times. Rest for 3 mins in between rounds to begin with and try to reduce rest to 2 mins.
Now, it is important to note that the 1 minute duration per exercise is only a target and you should not feel bad if you cannot complete the set. Just do what you can and wait for the timer buzz. In time, you will improve and complete the set.
Go ahead, give them a go!
