What Are Some Exercises I Can Do At Home?
As an Austin personal trainer for over 20 years, and a gym owner for almost a decade, I’ve learned a thing or 2 about what people are looking for when it comes to their workouts. I’m also rather well versed in what people expect from a gym. There’s another group of fitness enthusiasts, however. A group of people who may not be interested in working with a personal trainer, or even joining a gym for that matter. These folks want to work out at home. Some have home gyms, others simply take walks and stretch. Others are interested in going solo at the house, but have no idea where to start. This, of course, begs the question of what exercises I can do at home.
As I’ve written many times on my blog, or in various essays about Austin personal training, and what it encompasses, there is no such thing as a sweeping answer to anything in the health and fitness world other than we all need to exercise, eat well, and drink plenty of water. With that said, it would be impossible to make a comprehensive list of exercises, including annotations of their required forms that would be of much benefit. Since we have such a wide disparity of exercise experience, physical maladies, imbalances, motivations, and so on, it would only make sense to break it into several categories.
If you’re an experienced trainee asking yourself what exercises I can do at home, you’ll have a far greater list of options to choose from than an older person who’s just getting started with fitness. For example, assuming there are no debilitating injuries or imbalances such as tight or weakened levators, etc, push ups, pull ups, crunches, bodyweight dips, and so on, are all valid options. This is assuming that the trainee doesn’t have a home gym and has limited fitness resources on hand to work with. If there is a home gym set up and the trainee understands proper form for their body, the sky is the limit, just as in a commercial gym setting.
In the case of an inexperienced trainee asking me what exercises I can do at home, the possibilities are not nearly as endless. For example, a person without any education can easily injure themselves working out incorrectly, or at the very least, exacerbate a pre existing condition. No matter what you do, or who does it, for that matter, it must be done correctly in order to avoid injury and be of some benefit. The inexperienced crowd can certainly exercise at home, but will need to be far more selective in what they do. Stretching and walking are 2 viable options. Bicycle riding and swimming, in most cases are great options, provided there are no pre existing injuries such as prior labral tears, etc.
What exercises can I do from home if I’m a person who was once in shape and am looking to get back on track? The trainee in this scenario has a far greater range of options than a beginner, assuming they’re healthy and there’s nothing impeding them. This person can do body weight exercises, all of the cardiovascular exercises listed above such as walking, cycling, etc, and likely incorporate some weighted exercises as well.
Anyone who’s of sound body, meaning no injuries or imbalances, and who is pondering the what exercises can I do at home question, should perhaps consider a nominal investment in a few pieces of exercise equipment. This could mean a jump rope and a few dumbbells, or a perhaps an elliptical machine. It needn’t be a full on home gym set up, but the more you have at your disposal, the more you can do, of course. Your imagination is another thing you should use when it comes to devising exercises. My gym is on the smaller side, so over the years with my personal training clients, I’ve had to get inventive at times. There’s the obvious one of doing curls in the squat rack, but you can do even better than that by doing hamstring curls in a leg extension machine, for example, if you put a little thought into it. The same goes for whatever you have laying around your home. You can use the stairs for calf exercises as you ascend on the balls of your feet. You can place your feet on a chair while propping yourself up on your hands behind you on a different chair and do some dips for the triceps. If you want to get even more creative, consider starting from the pushup position and walking yourself backwards with your hands while you raise your hips in the air, and then walking back down to the pushup position, performing a pushup, and repeating the process for a number of repetitions. This will exercise your core, abdominals, deltoids, triceps, pectorals, as well as your imagination.
If you asking yourself what exercises I can do at home, simply think outside the box. If you limit yourself to pushups and crunches, you’re missing out on a plethora of possibilities. Another consideration is the repetition range as well as the number of sets you’ll perform. Why do the cliche 3 sets of 10 that every impersonal trainer prescribes? How about going to failure? How about doing sets of 50, or even 100? Change up the angles, the weights/resistance, and you’ll not only see better results, but you’ll find it loads more interesting as well. If, however, you are completely unsure of where you personally should begin as it pertains to your health, your fitness level, your previous injuries, and so on, consider hiring a qualified personal trainer for a few sessions. Even if you have no intention of ever joining a gym, or you wish to supplement your gym workouts with home based workouts, you’ll at least get a baseline from which you can start to build your foundation and ascend from there.
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Andy
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