6 Highly Effective Home Workouts For Optimal Fitness
Why would anyone in their right mind choose home workouts when they can just as easily workout at fully equipped gym? The answer: Because working out from home saves you a tremendous amount of time in life. Unfortunately, time is the one thing every human runs out of. And, frankly folks waste a lot of precious time, simply by driving back and forth to the gym.
Home Workouts
Just for fun, lets quickly do the math to see how much time you really save, by working out from your home. For this example lets say your gym is a 10 minute drive away. A pretty modest drive by most people’s standard. Lets say you’re highly motivated and go to the gym 3 days per week.
So, doing the math, you will spend one full hour each week of driving, simply driving to the gym. This translates to 4 hours per month, and 48 hours per year of time you waste being stuck in a car, simply to just to get to the gym to begin working out.
You literally lose two full days of your life every year driving to the gym, before you burn a single calorie from exercise. And, that’s only if your gym trip is 10 minutes each way…Let that sink in for a second.
Home workouts eliminate the need to waste all that time driving to the gym. You can get highly effective fat burning and muscle building workouts right from the comfort of your home in less time that it takes to drive to the gym each day.
Now that sounds like making the best use of your time. So, if you’re fired up to save a metric eff ton of time, simply by working out in the comfort of your home, the next logical question to address is, “what home-gym equipment do you need?”
Below is a list of highly effective home-gym equipment that doesn’t take up very much space.
Space Friendly Home-Gym Equipment Recommendations For Home Workouts
Ok, to be honest, you don’t really need any equipment to effectively workout at home. You can get great workouts just from bodyweight. Bodyweight exercises (calisthenics) have been around for 1000’s of years. They have withstood the test of time.
Calisthenics are wildly effective for burning fat, building lean aesthetically pleasing muscle, are very easy on the joints, and can be done anywhere. However, while I’m a huge fan of bodyweight only exercises, I do suggest that you get some equipment before the grand opening of your home gym.
Listed below are best pieces of home-gym equipment, that won’t take up all your space:
- Dumbbells (or, kettlebells) of varying weights
• Suspension straps, like a TRX or gymnastic rings
• Physical therapy resistance bands, or mini resistance bands
• Foam roller and lacrosse ball
• Doorframe pullup bar
• Jump rope
• Ab wheel
And, that’s really about it.
With the above equipment, you can create an almost limitless number of highly effective at-home style workouts. To help illustrate this point, below is a picture of my entire home gym (the only thing missing is the foam roller).
What Home-Gym Equipment Should You Buy First?
If you don’t currently have any equipment yet, what should you get first?
Well, you can’t go wrong by initially grabbing a few dumbbells (or kettlebells). You can generally get 2nd hand dumbbells pretty cheap at a Play-It-Again Sports type store, or even off of Craigslist. After you have acquired a few pairs of dumbbells, the next thing you should look into is buying a doorframe pull up bar.
With the weights, the pullup bar, and your bodyweight you have more than enough tools to start rocking your workouts right from your living room. The rest of the equipment you can fill in as you feel inspired.
Selecting the Appropriate Weight for Your Home-Gym Dumbbells
Ideally you should aim to acquire a few different weights of dumbbells. Try to spread these out to end up with light, medium, and heavy pair options. Here’s a down and dirty test to help you determine where the weight of the dumbbells falls on the range from light to heavy.
Light dumbbell test → Can you press the weight from your shoulders to overhead 8-12x, but no more?
If yes, they are perfect. If you get more than 12, they are too light. If you get less than 8, they are too heavy.
Medium dumbbell test → Can you press the weight from your shoulders to overhead 4-6x, but no more?
If yes, they are perfect. If you get more than 6, they are too light. If you get less than 4, they are too heavy.
Heavy dumbbell test → Can you pick up the dumbbells from the ground and stand tall (so the dumbbells are resting by your hips) between 3-5x?
If yes, they are perfect. If you get more than 5, they are too light. If you get less than 3, they are too heavy.
Onto the Good Stuff: The exercises and workouts
Once you’ve settled on an appropriate weight range for your dumbbells, the only thing left to do is start putting some miles on those bad boys. There are many, many, many exercises you can do from home. Below is short list of big bang for your buck exercises, to help you get the wheels turning.
Lower body
- Goblet squats
• Air squats
• Jump squats
• Lunges
• Jump lunges - Sumo deadlifts (w/ single dumbbell or kettlebell)
• Hip bridges
Upper body
- Pushups
• Handstand pushup
• Overhead press
• Pullups
• Rows
• Static holds on pullup bar
Total body - Swings
• Farmers carrys
• Crawling
Core
- Planks/ side planks
• Hollow holds
• Hollow rocks
• V-ups
• Hanging knee raises
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but should definitely give you enough ideas to get started rocking workouts from home.
Six Highly Effective Home Workout Routines
Workout number # 1 (bodyweight strength) →
5-4-3-2-1 reps of:
Handstand pushups
Pistol squats, per leg
Workout number # 2 (metabolic conditioning) →
Eight rounds of:
20 Seconds of burpees
3 Second transition
20 Seconds of jumping jacks
3 Second transition
20 Seconds of long jumps
3 Second transition
20 Seconds of thrusters
20 Second rest
Workout number # 3 (grind style conditioning) →
10-1 reps of:
Swings
Goblet squat
Jump squat
Pushups
Workout number # 4 (quick lower body blast) →
Three rounds of:
16 Goblet squats
16 Goblet reverse lunges
8 Jump squats
8 Jump lunges
No planned rest in between sets
Workout number # 5 (total body blast) →
Every minute on the minute for 5 minutes perform: 5 Renegade Row Pushups.
Rest the remainder of the minute.
–
Every minute on the minute for 5 minutes perform: 8 Dumbbell forward lunges 6 Alternating overhead press
Rest the remainder of the minute.
–
Every minute on the minute for 5 minutes perform: 10 Double dumbbell swings
Rest the remainder of the minute
Workout number # 6 (gotta dig deep for this one) →
1 Minute bear crawl
30 Second farmers carry, left
30 Second farmers carry, right
2 Minute bear crawl
45 Second farmers carry, left
45 Second farmers carry, right
3 Minute bear crawl
1 Minute farmers carry, left
1 Minute farmers carry, right
All done.
Final Thoughts About Home Workouts
Working out from your home is a great way to save a tremendous amount of time in your life, by not having to drive to the gym every time you want to crush a workout. Using just your bodyweight and a few pairs of dumbbells (or kettlebells) you can build superhuman strength, power strip body fat, and build the body of your dreams right from the comfort of your living room.
Author Bio
Tom Coffey is a former Army Ranger, and professional personal trainer. Tom teaches people how to effectively workout from home, so they can build the body of their dreams, while saving hours every week.
⇒ Grab his F.REE Home Workout Guide, “Body By Design: 32 Explosive Home Workouts, For Burning Fat, Building Muscle, and Saving Time”
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