Best At-Home Workouts

When you google “best at-home workouts” what you really want is for someone to tell you what is best for you. Some of us don’t really know what the best workout for us would be because we either haven’t asked ourselves the right questions or we don’t have the right answers.

Here are some good questions: What do you enjoy doing? How much time do you have to workout? What is your fitness/experience level? What do you want to accomplish? Do you like to workout with other people? Or are you looking for alone-time.

If you have no intention of making it to a gym, don’t think you have to shelve the idea of improving the quality of your life through exercise. There are many methods of training that don’t require expensive equipment or extensive know-how.

The first step to beginning an at-home fitness routine is to select a space in your home that you will use. Depending on what you plan on doing, a corner of your living room may suffice. If you intend to incorporate more dynamic cardio in your workout for weight-loss or general conditioning, don’t be afraid to take the routine outside. The benefits of training outside go far beyond what I am covering here today.

Here are 4 terms that you may have heard of, but might not exactly understand what they mean.

Let’s begin with weight training and compound exercises. Compound exercises are multi-joint movements that stimulate a single muscle or muscle groups. The other side of the coin is isolation movements that are single-joint movements and isolate one muscle. Isolation exercises, like the bicep curl, have value for those wishing to correct a muscle imbalance or for bodybuilders looking to grow the size of one particular muscle. They aren’t widely useful for general fitness. Compound exercises will give you the most bang for your buck as they burn more calories, build muscle mass more efficiently, and are systemically more challenging to execute than isolation movements as they demand the exerciser engage many muscles and joints for good form. 

Obviously, I am referring exclusively to weight training here. I am assuming that my reader already believes in the value of including some weight training in their fitness regimen. The best, most effective compound exercises to include in your home fitness routines are classics like the squat, deadlift, and the bench press, with honorable mention of the dip and the row. One of the most valuable benefits of incorporating compound exercises is that they are whole-structure building blocks for everyday movements. They strengthen foundational, supportive muscle groups like the back, internal muscles of the core, and the pelvic floor. Compound exercises are the golden fleece for muscle growth. It is imperative when executing any type of exercise, but especially when working with external weight, that you know what proper form looks like. Yes, you can hire a coach. But you can also do your research online if getting one-on-one coaching isn’t an option. Don’t take one person’s word for it. Look around.

You don’t have to work with weights to build muscle. I realize not all people will agree with me. Calisthenics has been around since ancient Greece. Commonly called ‘bodyweight’ training, calisthenics comes from the Greek ‘kalli’ meaning beautiful and ‘sthenos’ meaning strength. The intention behind this “beautiful strength” is not only to build muscle using one’s own body weight, but to achieve a high level of agility, flexibility, and power by moving against gravity. Weight training does not offer these varied benefits. This versatile mode of exercise has been utilized in the military community for thousands of years.

This type of training is also used by a wide range of athletes today. Think: pole-work (dancers), bar-work (street fitness), rope-work (circus performers), break-dancing, parkour, free-running, and of course, gymnastics. Don’t feel left out if you are down here with the rest of us who are unable to accomplish these high levels of fitness. There are literally hundreds of ways to include calisthenics in your fitness regimen and reap the many rewards. And you already know how to do them. Push-ups, squats, lunges, pull-ups, and planks are just the most popular. Each exercise listed here has dozens of variations. These are just examples of excellent and effective body-weight, equipment-free, and progression-based exercises. They are ideal for beginners, but bring massive benefit to athletes at any fitness level.

Let’s take the idea of bodyweight training and expand it. Plyometrics, or plyo-jump training, was brought to the United States track and field sports from Soviet Russia during the 1970’s. Plyometrics can be defined as muscles exerting maximum force in short bursts. In its original form, plyometrics was very specific to jump-training. Today you’ll find it incorporated in Crossfit boxes and football team drills all over the world. The goal is to increase power, agility, and strength, is utilized primarily by athletes, and should only ever be combined with other form of exercise as the large forces generated by these bursts of effort are very taxing on the body. While cautious experts might say “not for beginners,” one of the best things about plyometric exercises is the fact that they can be modified to almost any fitness level. When executed properly, the inclusion of plyometrics in sports team conditioning has been shown to actually lower the occurrence of injury. The most familiar plyometric exercises are the squat jump, tuck jump, power skip, box jump, plyo-pushup, and the broad jump. One may also think of sprints as the king of full-body, explosive, power-generating exercise. My advice, if you are just starting out, is to begin with calisthenics, and grow into plyometric training after you build a fitness foundation.

Last, but not least, especially when your fitness goals include fat reduction, is the all-popular HIIT- High Intensity Interval Training. HIIT borrows the “max effort” idea behind plyometric training and organizes the exertion to get maximal cardiovascular benefits by creating a metronomic rhythm to each workout. The basic idea is to perform a high intensity interval followed by a lower intensity recovery interval followed by another high intensity interval, and so on. The workouts last less than 30 minutes and revs the metabolism for outstanding calorie burn, which can result in maximum fat-loss. It’s a great addition to any fitness regimen. One great benefit to including HIIT to your fitness plan is that it can be tailored to any fitness level. “Intensity” means what is intense for you. The potential downside to this type of exercise is that it requires very high motivation as it is rather uncomfortable to execute. When it becomes comfortable for you, it’s no long high intensity, and you are no longer reaping the acute benefits of HIIT.

Studies published in the Journal of Diabetes Research, show HIIT to be much more effective for fat reduction in obese individuals than steady state cardiovascular exercise. However, for beginners with relatively low motivation, exercise adherence and self-efficacy is of primary concern and not what type of exercise works faster. Intense exercise whose benefit is based on the heart-rate going uncomfortably high can easily sour the whole idea of beginning an exercise habit for an unconditioned individual. Particularly the the first 6 months of your fitness journey, choosing a form of exercise which you enjoy should be at the top of your priority list. Don’t sell yourself short, though. If you want to take your athletic abilities to the next level and torch unnecessary fat stores, HIIT is the way to go for at-home, or anywhere, workouts. Consider adding tough intervals into cycling, running (sprints), stair climbing, bodyweight exercises, and plyometric training. The challenging nature of plyometrics really lends itself to the HIIT tempo.

The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research reports that, while something is always better than nothing when it comes to exercise, HIIT wins as the most effective exercise method to improve cardiovascular fitness, combat lifestyle induced high blood pressure and obesity, coronary artery disease, and metabolic syndrome, and for lowering insulin resistance.

As a bonus, a recent study published in eLife, Human Biology and Medicine, shows that high intensity bursts of exercise improves cognitive control and performance, and memory capacity among groups of children. I wager the mental benefits of engaging in HIIT are accessible to everyone, young and old. Another great reason to get the kids moving and challenging themselves too!

Set an interval timer, write out a plan, and get your sweat on for 10 to 30 minutes. With consistency, you’ll quickly start to see what the high intensity buzz is all about.

There is a lot of information here. These explanations are here to help you sift through all of the fitness info out there, both good and bad, to choose the best workouts for you, and to help you take control of your lifestyle and your fitness goals. Now that you understand what the heck people are talking about when they use words like compound movements, calisthenics, plyometrics, and HIIT methods, you can compile your own library of exercises, choose what is best for your own goals, and never run out of ways to strengthen your body, and push your mental capabilities to new levels.




Lunge Photo by Claire Ford
Plank Photo by Toby Marshman on Unsplash
Bar Photo by Keit Trysh on Unsplash
Track Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash
Sprint Photo by Braden Collum on Unsplash
HIIT Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash