By Arwa Lodhi
There can be little doubt that exercise is crucial for a healthy lifestyle, and is the best way to get a toned figure. So important is working out that some medical professionals have even suggested that not exercising may be worse for your health than smoking! The truth is that exercise is time consuming; it can be hard to find the time to go to the gym or join a team, especially if you work full-time and have a family to take care of. Not to mention the fact that a gym membership can be expensive – not everyone will want to spend a small fortune on a membership that they may never find the time to use. But exercise doesn’t have to be expensive or take up too much time. In fact, you can do enough exercise to get fit and maintain a healthy lifestyle from inside your own home.
Here are 4 easy ways to get fit at home, any time you like.
1. Get the Gear
If you prefer cardiovascular exercise like cycling or running, then it’s worth considering some home exercise equipment. This type of equipment won’t necessarily break the bank either, with companies like Hammer showing that training in your house can be simple and cost-effective with non-electronic equipment like punching bags and suspension training devices, which can be used in any kind of home. If you have sturdier floors and a bigger budget, why not spring for your own treadmill or cross trainer? You could go for a 20 minute run or a session on the elliptical trainer before you leave the house in the morning, without even changing out of your pajamas! You can also watch your favourite TV shows or listen to your favourite music to keep you motivated. Working out at home will save you time and makes daily exercise easy.
2. Make Your Own Bootcamp
A bootcamp-style workout can be quite fun and will burn a lot of calories. This kind of workout is easily done at home, but just make sure you’re wearing the right sneakers and don’t have anyone in a flat below you! For the perfect bootcamp-style workout, do rotating circuits of 2 minutes of jumping jacks, lunges, pushups, rope skipping and situps. Start out with two circuits, totalling 20 minutes, and work up to four circuits, increasing the speed between exercises to improve fitness. Make sure you’ve got some upbeat music blasting to keep you moving!
3. Practice Some Yoga
Another way of incorporating exercise into your daily routine at home is by taking up yoga. Yoga is a great form of exercise, and can relieve stress, improve posture and will strengthen your muscles. Not only is yoga relaxing and great exercise, it doesn’t require much space, which makes it the perfect exercise to do at home. All you need is a yoga mat and some comfortable clothing. If you’ve never done yoga before, you can find loads of good tutorials on YouTube that will show you the basics. One of our personal favourite beginner classes is by renowned British teacher Tara Lee, below:
4. Try Tabata
If you’re not familiar with Tabata training, this is a style of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) discovered by Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata, and which has become hugely popular with personal trainers because it allows them to help clients get fit in the shortest time possible. The structure goes like this:
- 20 seconds of an intense exercise
- 10 seconds of rest
- Repeat for a total of 8 rounds (4 minutes)
That’s it. 4 minutes is all it takes!
Although some people like to focus on one exercise for the whole workout, it can be more interesting to mix and match different exercises. For a more advanced workout, you could do one muscle group, say arms, for one session of 4 minutes, then focus on legs, butt and core, totalling 16 minutes that will feel like a hardcore workout. Here’s a great introductory workout, below:
See? It doesn’t take much time – or a fancy gym membership – to get fit. You can do it in a variety of ways whenever you like, all from your own home.
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