10 Best Indoor Home Exercises & Workouts Without Equipment!
Physical exercise offers fantastic benefits for your body and mind. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans highlights some of the most notable health benefits of physical activity, ranging from improved sleep to reduced anxiety and from reduced weight gain to a lower risk of death.
If you have a home, then you have a home gym. If you have a body, then you can do bodyweight exercises. It’s really that simple. Put the two together and you have one of the secrets to staying in shape for a lifetime.
1. Yoga
No matter your needs or abilities, there’s probably a yoga style out there for you. If you’re looking for gentle stretches, you can try a calm, relaxed style like hatha or yin. If you’re looking for something a little more intense, try a power yoga session.
Plenty of free online yoga classes are available — for example, you can find many yoga videos on YouTube, including the popular Yoga With Adriene. Once you get familiar with the poses and sequences, you can put together your own practice without the help of a video.
As far as equipment goes, if you have a yoga mat, that’s great. But you don’t need one. I find that a carpet is often supportive and soft enough for at-home yoga, but you can lay down a towel for even more softness.
2. Barre
Before I tried it, I thought barre was an easy, gentle workout. Boy, was I wrong. Barre is tough but fun. It’s an intense workout that focuses on strengthening your core muscles, improving your cardiovascular endurance, and boosting your balance. Many people believe you need equipment for barre, but you don’t.
If you’re worried about balance and want some support, a dining chair or counter can take the place of the wall-mounted barre. I’ve had success using an ironing board for support, but more often than not, I skip it and just do the moves while balancing on my own. For parts of the workout that call for small hand weights, you can swap in canned goods or just do without the weights. Trust me, by the end of the sequence, your muscles will be burning whether you use weights or not.
You can find lots of free barre workouts on YouTube. I recommend starting with a short 20-minute or so session, then building your way up from there.
Some yoga teachers use props, such as straps and blocks, but you don’t need them. You can substitute a roll of paper towels for a yoga block if you need the extra lift during poses. An old pair of tights or leggings can stand in for a strap. And if necessary, a folded-up blanket or pillow can take the place of a bolster (a cushion that provides support during certain types of restorative poses).
3. Couch Potato Workout
A couch potato workout is one you can do from the comfort of your couch. You squeeze it in during the commercial breaks of your favorite TV show or when you’d otherwise be vegging out.
One example of couch potato exercises is sitting-to-standing. During this exercise, you repeatedly stand up from the couch, then sit back down again. It helps build your butt and thigh muscles and can get your heart rate up, depending on how quickly you stand and sit.
You can also do tricep dips. If you have one, push the coffee table out of the way. Scooch forward on the couch so your butt is barely in contact with the edge. Put your hands on the edge of the couch on either side of your body, then push yourself up from the edge. Lower your body down toward the floor, then lift again using your arms. Repeat.
4. Walking Upstairs
Whether it’s raining, snowing, or you just can’t leave the house, you can still fit in your steps and get in some cardiovascular exercise by walking up and down any stairs at home or in your apartment building.
You can also spice things up by doing a step aerobic workout. Step up and down from the landing to the first step, trying to see how quickly you can go. Mix things up by turning to one side or the other as you step up and down.
Another option is to work your step workout into an interval training session. Spend a minute or so stepping, then try jumping jacks for a minute. Go back to the stairs for another minute, then try some pushups. Get creative and see how many exercises you can fit into your workout.
5. Pilates
There are two types of Pilates exercises: those that use studio equipment and those you can perform pretty much anywhere on a mat or soft surface. While you probably need to visit a studio to work with Pilates apparatus (or shell out the big bucks for your own), you can easily do a mat workout at home.
Although you’re likely to find a wide variety of online Pilates workouts or Pilates YouTube channels, the classical sequence is a series of 34 movements outlined by Joseph Pilates in his book “Return to Life Through Contrology.” You can memorize the movements and perform them wherever you’d like. As with yoga, you can do the exercises on a towel if you don’t own a mat.
Final Word
If it’s challenging for you to get up the motivation to go to the gym or if leaving your house isn’t an option, you don’t have to skip exercise. Getting in a workout or two at home is likely to make you feel better, both physically and mentally.
Along with letting you workout from the comfort of your living room, another great thing about equipment-free exercises is that there’s nothing to lose. If you find that kickboxing, Pilates, or yoga just aren’t for you, you can easily move on to something else without any financial commitment.
What are your favorite exercises to do at home?
5 of the Easiest Exercises You can do at Home!👇👇👇
Here are some other videos that show how to do modifications for each for each of these exercises:
Crunch – 12 Different Ab Exercises for Your Ab Workout
Plank – 5 Planks for killer Abs
Push-up – 10 Push-ups to Get You Ripped
Squats – The Four-Minute Leg-Toning Workout
Lunges – Four Lunges to Tone Your Legs
Additional fitness tips:
http://goo.gl/vFWbTLQuick workouts:
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