Moreover, it became even more evident that following a healthy diet is not enough to stay fit. Healthy food needs to be accompanied by constant physical exercise that can be done even in the comfort of your own home, as long as it is carried out correctly and with the right equipment. In this article, we’ll provide you with some useful tips for home workout beginners on how to turn your home into a professional home gym.
Let's start: the equipment for home gym
In order to choose the right equipment for your home gym, you need to set some specific goals. Do you want to lose some weight? Put on some muscle mass? Or rather tone up? These are all different body goals that need to be approached with different equipment, especially if you want your results to be visible and, most importantly, to last over time.
Here’s some examples of home gym equipment depending on the body goal you set for yourself:
- To lose weight: the priority is to burn as many calories as possible. Treadmills, exercise bikes, and jump ropes are ideal for intense cardio workouts.
- To tone up: you need to strengthen the muscles and lose fat mass. Bodyweight exercises are perfect for beginners, but to make it gradually more challenging you can use elastic bands, for instance while doing squat jumps, donkey kicks or fire hydrant exercises.
- To put on muscle mass: Dumbbells are a must-have: safe, effective, and easy to use, available in different weights on the basis of your level.
Once you decide which kind of equipment suits your needs best, you can start thinking about your workouts.
The importance of warming up before workouts
This is perhaps the most undervalued tip, but warming up is an essential part of training, especially in the case of self-organized workout sessions at home. The warm-up phase is meant to get your body ready for physical effort, loosening your muscles and making them more flexible.
15 minutes of aerobic exercise should be enough to increase your body’s temperature and reduce the risk of injuries. Warm-ups can consist of a variety of exercises and stretches, but we advise that you choose a warm-up that mimics the exercises you will be doing in your workout. You can alternate between leg bends, leg swings, shoulder/arm circles, jumping jacks, jumping rope, torso twists and so on. And don’t forget to stretch your muscles a bit!
Home workout for beginners
As beginners, you should bear in mind that regularity is much more important than intensity. Do not try to immediately push your limits with long and strenuous training sessions, also because your body is not ready for them, but opt instead for medium-short workouts of varying rhythms that you can do with regularity from three up to five times per week.
In fact, a longer workout doesn’t necessarily mean a more effective one. Try to plan your workouts realistically, thinking about the moments of your day when you always have at least half an hour free from other commitments. It might be before getting to work, at lunchtime or in the evening: what is important is that workout becomes part of your daily routine.
And remember easy is not a synonym for useless. Begin with exercises you feel comfortable doing, there will always be the possibility to raise the bar and make them harder at a later time. Let’s now see some examples of beginner exercises to do at home.
Some exercises to do
Regardless of the body goals you have decided to set for yourself, it is important that you make an effort to train your whole body with a holistic approach, because while training a particular body part you’re always strengthening the whole.
The exercises we suggest are therefore made up of four distinct but connected categories: chest, legs, arms, and abs.
Home workout for chest
Having a strong and toned chest is equally essential for both men and women and goes way beyond fitness aesthetics since chest muscles play a key role when it comes to pushing movements and supporting your back.
- Without equipment: The oldie but a goodie classic push-ups and all its variations is one of the best exercises you can do to improve the strength of your chest muscles.
- With equipment: Rowing is great for opening up and strengthening your chest muscles. Rowing machines do not take up much space and can be regulated in order to increase or decrease the intensity of your training at your own choice. Also, the functional bench is ideal for specific training with barbells, dumbbells and small accessories as well as for bodyweight exercises.
Home workout for legs
Quadriceps, hamstrings or calves: leg muscles are the longest and strongest in our body, and deserve, therefore, special attention. They are particularly important because they are responsible for almost all our movements.
- Without equipment: Use your own body weight to train your leg muscles with lunges, squats, calf raises, and many other exercises.
- With equipment: Treadmills are by far the most beloved machine for home workout because they’re easy to use, practical and fun. Not only can you use your treadmill to walk or run, but it lends itself to a variety of exercises, such as standing crab walking, where you walk sideways in a squat position. Elastic bands are also very useful to increase the intensity of your workout.
Home workout for arms
In most cases, the biceps and the triceps are the muscles that the majority of people tend to target when working on their arms.
- Without equipment: Arms can be trained in many ways, but some effective exercises are inchworms, plank, and push-ups.
- With equipment: Dumbbells and all sorts of weights are ideal to train your arms at home, because they activate a number of different muscles and stimulate muscle growth.
Home workout for abs
Get a stronger and more beautiful core by working on your abs. Ab workouts are especially great to do from home because they require little space or equipment.
- Without equipment: Crunches, plank, sidekicks, or V-ups: they’re all perfect to strengthen your abs.
- With equipment: The functional bench is the most versatile and useful tool to exercise your abs. You can combine workouts with elastic bands, hexagon dumbbells or weighted knuckles and get fit while having fun.
And if you don't have time, here's 30 minutes of full body home workout for you
Here’s for you an example of a 30 minutes full body circuit in case you don’t have the time to design your own.
- Warm-Up. 10 minutes. Leg bends, shoulder/arm circles and jumping jacks.
- Inchworm. 1 minute. Rest 15sec.
- Push-ups. 30sec. Inhale as you lower down and exhale as you push up. Rest 15sec.
- Tricep Kickback: 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Mountain Climber. 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Squats. 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Jump Squat. 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Side Lunges. 30sec. Rest 15sec. (both sides)
- Squat Floor Taps. 1 minute. Rest 15sec.
- Alternating Lunge. 1 minute. Rest 15sec.
- Plank Knee-To-Nose. 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Plank Knee-To-Elbow. 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Plank Knee-To-Opposite-Elbow. Rest 15sec.
- Shoulder Taps. 30 sec. Rest 15sec.
- Toe Touch Crunch. 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Alternating Knee Crunch. 30sec. Rest 15sec.
- Cooling Down. 5 minutes. Mixed stretching.
