With winter around the corner and the weather getting colder and colder, it can make you want to just stay indoors and under the warm blankets, and avoid venturing outdoors to workout. Very few people are actually aware that they can still have a great workout at home with minimal equipment.
Here are 5 tips to help you get started with those indoor home workouts, whether you’re a guy or girl:
There are many great youtube channels and people that make yoga or pilates workout videos that can be perfect to follow. All you need is to play the video on your laptop and follow the workout, it’s like you have a personal instructor right there with you. Some really good yoga channels to follow are KinoYoga, YogabyCandace, YogawithAdriene.
2. HIIT Bodyweight exercises.
Include the basic bodyweight exercises in your workouts, such as push ups, dips, burpees, lunges, squats etc. They are great exercises to target all the major muscles of the body. To make your workout even more intense try supersetting a few of the exercises or making it a HIIT style workout where you perform a few exercises one after the other, then have a small rest before going at it again. This is perfect since there is minimal equipment needed and it gets your heart rate right up.
3. Get creative.
Some exercises such as tricep dips, may require a bit of elevation to ensure full range of motion. For this you can easily use a sturdy table or chair. If you also find yourself needing a bit more resistance on the exercises, rubber resistance bands are great to use to add more ‘weight’ to the bodyweight exercises making them more challenging.
4. Warm up.
Be sure to warm up first before any indoor workout, especially if it is quite cold during winter for example. A perfect warm up is some basic skipping with a jump rope or even running on the spot keeping your knees up for a period of time (you can do a few sets here).
5. Make sure to focus on your CORE and not waste your time doing ab crunch workouts.
There are many ‘workouts’ available that are marketed to give you a flat tummy and all they do in the workout is so many variations of crunches. Yes sure it will burn, but by doing such kinds of exercises, you do not burn all that many calories. So rather focus on the HIIT body weight exercises that focus on bigger muscles and more than one muscle group to ensure you burn a lot more calories in your home workouts.
