At Home Workout Plan without Equipment

Exercise is irreplaceably essential for a healthy human body, and a healthy body is something every human wants. But there are often many obstacles in the way if one does decide to work out.

A lot of people have trouble taking time out from their already busy lives to go to the gym, and most people have no idea what exercises/ workouts would be best suited to their bodies. The first problem is easily solved by working out at home, where you can decide the best workout schedule that suits you.

But planning workouts to do at home would require you to have a reasonable level of knowledge about body-weight exercises.

To teach you how to make a workout plan and make the best home workout for yourself, we will talk about some exercises best suited to this purpose. But before that, you need to know what the benefits of a good workout should be.

Fat Burning/ Weight Loss

The best home workout would, for most people, be a fat burning workout. Any exercises that you start doing at home need to be effective when it comes to helping you reduce your body’s fat levels.

Gain Muscle

Gaining muscle mass is one of the most desirable aspects of working out, with most people making it their top priority. A lot of people struggle with the question of how to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Some exercises are better than others at building muscle mass, and you should be focusing on the ones that are more effective.

Increase Flexibility

Some people want to start exercising because they want to feel better about themselves and to have a body that feels better and more flexible. Having a body that is flexible is largely equivalent to having a body that is less susceptible to injury. For this, you need to know how to improve flexibility.

If you want to Fat Burning/ Weight Loss...

HIIT workouts

There are dozens of exercises that you could do, which would burn fat and help you lose weight over time. But some workouts are better suited to help you lose weight than others, and the best fat burning workouts are HIIT workouts. HIIT is a shorter way of writing High-Intensity Interval Training. HIIT workouts have been scientifically proven to be better at burning fat than any other forms of exercise.

HIIT workouts can be performed by alternating between short, high-intensity periods of exercise which use up a large amount of energy and fixed, low-intensity recovery periods. Since the workout is supposed to be done at your maximum capability, it will leave you on the floor and gasping for breath after a few intervals, only ten to fifteen minutes later.

HIIT workouts are the best fat loss workouts, and they have many benefits; performing a HIIT workout once burns calories for the next 24 hours, performing HIIT workouts regularly increases metabolism and makes the heart stronger, and it can be performed in a very short time compared to other fat burning exercises, i.e. HIIT workouts are quick workouts.

The beauty of performing a HIIT workout at home is that it is quick, doesn’t require a lot of equipment and can be done with a lot of different bodyweight exercises. These exercises can be used to construct fat burning workouts for men and/ or a beginner workout for women, even though HIIT workouts are gender neutral. Some of the exercises that can be used to plan out a HIIT workout have been listed and briefly described below.

Squats

A large number of people have the same question in mind; how many calories do squats burn? The answer is; more than any other lower body exercise. Squats are the single greatest and most effective exercise when it comes to training your lower body. They help you strengthen your legs and core, while also working your lower back. The reason that squats burn considerably more calories is that they engage a lot of muscle groups. Squats benefits? When squatting, you are using your quads (thighs), calf muscles, hamstrings, gluteus (butt) muscles, lower back muscles and your entire core.

Burpees

Burpees are an extremely efficient fat burning exercise. If you’re wondering ‘how many calories do burpees burn’, they burn 10 calories for every minute of moderate exercise. The amount of calories burned goes much higher if they are performed at an intense rate. Burpees are performed by standing straight up, jumping in the air, going to the ground in a pushup position and then standing back up, without doing a pushup. If you’re questioning the benefits of burpees, they burn fat from your arms, legs, chest, back and core.

Planks

Planks are easily one of the best and most intense exercises when it comes to building up core strength and burning calories. A plank is performed by placing your elbows on the ground and placing your feet far enough for your back and legs to be straight and completely in line with each other. After this, you are supposed to hold this position, without bending your back downwards, as long as you possibly can.

Push-ups

Pushups are simply one of the best, most intense and more effective upper body exercises. A pushup is performed by placing your palms and feet on the ground while keeping your elbows and back straight, pushing yourself downwards and then returning to the original position without touching the ground. Pushups are a great exercise for developing your chest, abs, lower back, shoulders and arms.

Jumping Jacks

Jumping jacks are performed by alternatively jumping with your legs close together and then far apart to your sides, while simultaneously moving your hands above your head to mirror your legs. Jacks are an extremely tiring exercise and if you’re wondering ‘how many calories do jumping jacks burn’, the answer is that they help burn a lot of calories by working your arms, shoulders, legs and core.

Mountain Climbers

Mountain climbers are an extremely effective exercise. A mountain climber is performed by going into a pushup position with one leg straight and one leg placed on the ground under your chest, so as to seem that you’re climbing a steep slope. After this, you perform small jumps while alternatively bring the extended leg up and extending the leg that is under your chest.

Sit-ups

Sit-ups are an exercise that is best suited for training your core and building a good looking set of abs. To perform a sit-up, you have to lie down on the ground with your legs bent and feet on the ground. After this, you pull your torso up to your thighs without moving your legs, and then slowly move it back to the ground.

Leg Raises

Leg raises are a very good exercise for your core and lower belly. Lying straight down on the floor on your back, you pull your legs up until they’re perpendicular to the ground without, bending them at the hip while keeping your knees straight.

High Knees

High knees are a very basic yet effective form of exercise. Standing straight up, you jump and simultaneously pull one knee as far up as possible, bending at the knee, while keeping the other leg straight and then alternating between legs. High knees are very good at burning fat and exercise your legs, calves, abs and lower back.

Sitting Twists

To perform sitting twists, you have to start by sitting on the ground with your knees in front of you, bent at right angles. After this, you lean back a little and twist your torso from right to left, so as to exercise your entire core throughout the exercise. This exercise will help you build a strong lower back and abs.

These are all the exercises that you can use to construct a workout plan to lose fat. The key to a good workout plan is that it is well balanced, and has exercises targeting all the major muscle groups in the human body. It is also advised to include a lot of compound exercises; exercises that target multiple major muscle groups, in your HIIT workout plan. The three main exercises that fit this criterion are squats, burpees and push-ups.

No matter what exercises you select out of the exercises that have been listed, you have to remember that they have to be performed in intervals, at high intensities. Scientific research has found that a high-intensity interval workout burns 50 percent more calories than a workout of the same volume performed at a moderate pace. For this reason, shaping your workout like a HIIT workout is of utmost importance.

One of the greatest qualities of these exercises is that they can be performed at home at your convenience, and the only piece of equipment required for you to work out would be a yoga mat. The reason that you should use a yoga mat is that they are soft and would prevent the skin on your hands, knees or elbows from damage while working out.

>>>Read More: 15 minutes full body HIIT workout plan

If you want to Gain Muscle…

Gaining muscle mass is one of the biggest contributing factors for people when they make the decision to start working out, and undoubtedly will have been for you too. But gaining muscle and size is easier said than done, and it can be a long and tiring process which requires you to consistently put in a lot of effort for weeks on end. To learn how to gain muscle, you need first to understand what functions muscles perform in your body and how your body handles muscle mass.

The purpose of muscle tissue in your body is to help you perform tasks, where force is exerted. If the volume and/ or intensity of your workouts remains the same, the muscle mass of your body will not increase. This is because the body is capable of performing the current level of exercise that you are doing with its current muscle mass, and since the exercise is not becoming any more difficult to perform, muscle tissue does not need to grow. There are three simple and straightforward ways to overcome this hurdle, but they require a lot of hard work and consistency. These are:

Increasing Volume

The first way is increasing the volume of exercise that you are doing. In simpler terms, this means that you need to keep increasing the amount of repetitions (reps) you perform for every exercise that you do,e.g. you could increase the reps of squats you do, by doing 30 squats instead of 20 squats per set. You could also keep the number of repetitions constant but increase the number of sets being performed.

Increasing Load

You could also start increasing the load that your muscles are taking. It will need a little bit of equipment. This can be achieved by using dumbbells and increasing the weight being lifted by your muscles, e.g. you could hold dumbbells in both of your hands and then proceed to perform squats for the same amount of reps as you previously do. As time goes on, you can progressively but marginally keep increasing the weight of the dumbbells.

If you want to incorporate some equipment into your workout routine, learn here the 10 Best Gym Equipments you might want.

Increase Time under Tension

Time under tension refers to the amount of time that your muscles spend performing an exercise. The greater the amount of time they spend performing an exercise, the greater their need to grow. This can be achieved in two ways; increasing the number of repetitions, or performing your current level of repetitions but at a much slower pace.

When it comes to starting a muscle building workout by looking at muscle building workout plans and choosing the best one for yourself, you need to remember to set a target for yourself. You could choose to prioritize a lower body workout or a chest and shoulder workout, depending on where your body lacks muscle mass to a greater extent. These plans can be chosen online from workout plans for men to build muscle. Nonetheless, we will give you some tips on what criteria you should set for choosing a good workout plan.

Upper Body Muscle Gains

If your goal is to target your upper body, then you should try to do an upper body dumbbell workout by performing either a shoulder and back workout or a back and chest workout.

The best upper body workout would be one that incorporates upper chest exercises, upper arm exercises, shoulder exercises and the best upper back exercises. Such an upper body workout routine would definitely suit you best because it balances all the different upper body exercises that you would want to do.

• Chest Workout with Dumbbells at Home: Any good chest workout with dumbbells should have the following exercises; Flat bench press, incline bench press, dumbbell chest fly, dumbbell chest pullover.
• Back Workout at Home: Some of the best dumbbell back exercises are bent over dumbbell row, dumbbell deadlifts and the one arm row.
• Arm Workouts at Home: Some good dumbbell arm exercises are standing bicep curls, hammer curls, standing overhead triceps extension and wrist curls.
• Shoulders Workouts at Home: All good shoulder workouts should have following exercises listed under them; dumbbell shoulder press, bent-over dumbbell rear delt raise and a side delt raise. These are some of the best dumbbell exercises for shoulders.
• Core exercises at Home: You can also do exercises for your core with the use of dumbbells. This can be done by doing a plank with a dumbbell on your back or doing crunches or sitting twists with dumbbells in your hands. This will make the exercises more intense and help you gain more muscle.

Lower Body Muscle Gains

A leg workout routine that has been crafted carefully and expertly can act as an ideal leg workout for women and men, both. The most basic and effective one is the dumbbell squat, which allows you to keep adding weight to your squat so that you can keep building more and more muscles on your legs.

Another very important lower body exercise is walking lunges done with dumbbells in both hands. This exercise will help you gain muscle mass and strengthen the stabilizing muscles in your legs. Dumbbell calf raises are also a very good exercise and important exercise. Hamstring exercises at home are easily performed, and hip extension exercises are one of them. Although, the best hamstring exercise that you can perform for muscle growth is the stiff-legged deadlift, which isolates and targets your hamstrings.

If you want to Increase Flexibility…

If the question in your head is ‘why is stretching important’, this section will answer that question. Flexibility is a very important attribute for the human body to have. It can help you in your daily tasks and make your body resistant to injury. Another thing that many people wonder is; why does stretching feel good? This is because it can also help loosen the tight muscles in your body, and relieve you of body aches.

There are many different types of flexibility workouts that you can perform, but they will depend on the goals that you have set for yourself. Before beginning any workout, you have to decide which parts of your body you want to work on and what types of stretching you want to do. There are two main types of stretching that you can do to make your body more flexible, and they have been explained below.

Dynamic Stretching

Dynamic stretching is a form of stretching where you are slowly but constantly moving up, and it is the best form of stretching to perform before working out or playing sports. This is because dynamic stretching helps warm up your body by increasing blood flow to all parts of the body and slowly increasing your heart rate. Dynamic stretching is so effective that it is slowly becoming a vital part of professional athletes’ pre-game warm-ups, no matter what sport you take into consideration.

Static Stretching

Static stretching is the classic form of stretching. During static stretching, you perform a stretch and hold the position for more than 30 seconds. This is why it has been called static stretching, keeping it true to its name. Static stretching is beneficial when it is performed after a workout, so as to cool the muscle down. It elongates the muscle and provides relief.

If you’re wondering how to increase flexibility in your body and looking for ways for starting stretching, then there are many different alternatives for you to take. The first option for you to consider is a morning stretch routine, which would help you start your day in a healthy way and leave you feeling great throughout the day. Lower body stretches are very good for your legs and lower back.

Since you spend most of your day walking or sitting, your legs and back accumulate a lot of stress, which can be relieved by lower body stretches. Stretching before bed to finish the day is very good for your body, and will help you sleep better as well.

If you want more alternatives on how to improve flexibility, a yoga stretch might be the answer for you. Yoga stretches can be amazing stretches for flexibility, and provide you with relief and good health. Passive stretching is another option for you, where an external force; such as your workout partner, is applying force to help you stretch. Daily stretches are very important for your body to obtain the benefits of stretching continuously.

Some of the best stretches that you can do are the standing hamstring stretch, the lunge with a spinal twist, the standing quad stretch and the triceps stretch, amongst many others. The only equipment that you require to perform any sorts of stretches is; a lacrosse ball, a rubber band, a rope and a foam roller.

Conclusion

Unless you’re the type of person, who wants bulging arms and huge arms and legs, working out at home will fulfill all of your body’s exercise needs. Through a combination of the fat loss techniques and the various ways of gaining muscle mass mentioned above, you can create a perfect home workout plan that will live up to your expectations and allow you to have the body you want. Doing all of the fat loss and muscle gaining exercises mentioned, along with the different kinds of stretches throughout the day, will allow you to reach new and improved standards of health for yourself.