Physical activity helps keep your body healthy. Unfortunately, you may find yourself with
work, hobbies, or habits that don’t allow as much physical activity or enough
variety of physical activity that your body needs. Thus, participating in exercises outside of just
your normal daily routine is really important.
When I think of a
practical workout, it’s one that is not too time consuming and can be done with
two little kids running around me and possibly with a baby in my arms. Typically
though the kind of workout that will get a good calorie burn in involves an hour
at a gym running, biking, and doing some calisthenics or lifting weights. The
latter is definitely my “ideal” workout…but it’s not the one I get much
opportunity to enjoy. So I wanted to share what I believe to be the way to get
the most benefit (calorie burn, muscle growth, flexibility increase, and
increased cardio stamina) from a thirty minute at home workout… a workout that
doesn’t require equipment or a lot of room and can be improvised and done
possibly while holding a baby or doing chores.
Any good workout routine
has three important elements: cardio,
strength, and flexibility. Cardio training helps your cardiovascular
and respiratory systems, it builds up your endurance for day to day activities,
and helps burn calories and fat…with heart disease being a number one killer
this is something you definitely don’t want to slack on.
Strength training
is about working all those muscles that support your bone structure and give us
a better defense against injury. Building muscle also helps us burn fat and look
amazing!
Including flexibility
exercises into your routine can help prevent injury, increase your ability
to build muscle, helps your mind and body relax, and yes can also burn
calories.
Now to put together a
good workout around these key elements you’ll want to consider duration and
frequency of your workouts. Shoot for at least 30 minutes each time, at least
3-5x a week. Having set days and times
will help you make a habit of it.
But what exercises should
you actually do? I suggest, start with some cardio…Do you like to dance? Crank up the music, shimmy and shake…put on a
CD or play list that lasts at least 30 minutes and don’t stop moving (a plus to
this cardio workout is it can be done hands free or holding a kid or two)!
If you’re not really into dancing…jumping jacks,
“pretend” jump roping, and running in place (knees high!) all can burn a ton of
calories in a short amount of time and use up very little space with no
equipment necessary. So simple!
A personal cardio workout favorite of mine is
kickboxing, online videos and a
little more space can help with this one (don’t want to knock out your kid).
Pick one of these cardio options, set a timer, keep your intensity up and the
time will fly by.
For strength training,
try push-ups,
sit-ups, crunches, squats,
tri-cep dips, plank, the list goes on…Pick a few exercises that work different
muscles. Push-ups are great for core and arms, but if they are too hard
starting out try a modified push-up or plank*.
Throw in some crunches or sit-ups for more core, and squats or leg lifts
for toning your buns and thighs. Then
again, set the timer or make a music play list that runs 15-30 minutes and just
keep rotating through, try 10, 20, or 30 reps(*or seconds) each. With time your
strength will increase and you can try more reps, longer time, or harder
exercises…ever try a one handed push-up?
Yes, that baby makes it
look easy. But you can get there too with time.
And hey why not start them
young, if you get your kiddos involved doing exercises with you instead of
climbing on you or demanding things during your workout it might make the at
home workouts go smoother.
Lastly flexibility exercises…want to make it easy for
your self, follow along with a yoga video. Or try some
of these classic stretches: touch your
toes, reach for the sky, alternate bringing your knees to your chest, rotate
your shoulders, alternate pulling your ankles to your butt, lunge right/left.
Try to do each stretch for at least 10 seconds, rotate through each a couple
times and there you have it.
Mix and match exercises, try routines one day that focus
on cardio, then strength or flexibility the next or mix them all together in
each workout. After about two weeks of the same workout (same exercises and
intensity) your body will probably max out on benefit and you’ll need to step
it up a notch to get that metabolism going strong again. Most importantly keep
your intensity up, your form neat, and your workouts frequent.
What else will help you
get the most from your workout? Sleep, relaxation, and good nutrition; more on
these topics coming in future posts, stay tuned!
Have
some at home workout tips? Share them below!!
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