You don’t need to join a gym or fitness center or buy an expensive piece of exercise to burn calories in your home. Using items you have around the house, or a few, affordable pieces of equipment, you can create beginner, intermediate or advanced workouts. Follow a basic workout pattern to create cardio, fat-burning, muscle-building or sports training workouts.
Beginner Workouts
The key to beginner workouts is working longer, not harder. While raising your intensity will burn more calories, you may tire quickly and have to stop. Your goal for the first few weeks of a beginner home exercise program is to build your cardio stamina and muscular endurance, so you can move to longer, more intense workouts.
Mix It Up
Don’t do only one exercise. You may get bored, and put a repetitive stress on your muscles and joints.
Consider Impact
Jumping up and down, especially with both feet leaving the ground at once, puts stress on your muscles and joints. Even jumping rope, jogging in place or doing jumping jacks might cause pain if you do them vigorously for many minutes. Use high-impact exercises only a few minutes at a time, in between low-impact exercises.
Don’t Sweat It
If you’re sweating profusely, you may be working too hard. If you can’t maintain your pace for at least 15 minutes, slow down. Remember, your goal is to build your cardio stamina, so choose a pace that lets you keep going. Work toward a goal of being able to exercise for 30 minutes at a time. The American Heart Association recommends exercising at a pace similar to a brisk walk for 30 minutes, five times a week, for heart health, and 60 minutes or more for weight loss.
You should sweat when you do aerobic exercise, but that will come a few weeks after you start exercising and have built your stamina and endurance.
Get Comfortably Numb
Watching TV or listening to music or a book takes your mind off the repetitive movements you’re doing. Work out in front of a TV or while listening to your iPod.
Exercises
Use the following exercises in your workout room or area to create a circuit-training workout for fun and fitness.
- Walking in place with high knees
- Walking stairs
- Pushups, situps, squats, lunges, crunches
- Jumping jacks
- Butt kicks
- Skipping rope
- Hula Hooping
- Exercise bike
- Treadmill
- Exercise ball exercises
- Dancing
- Shadow boxing
- Boxing kicks
- Dumbbell exercises
- Resistance band exercises