Work Out Plans to Exercise at Home

Article by Jason Green

How to exercise at home for better results than a gym, sample work out plan included!

So a large part of my life is about simplification. And when it comes to health and fitness, I don’t always have 2-3 hours a day to allocate to attending the health club. That’s just ridiculously inefficient when you begin contemplating travel time and shower time, etc. So what I’ve been doing (and have observed GREAT results with) is searching for ways to make fitness part of my day to day regimen. So let me tell you what I do, and how you can do the same.

And no, you’re not likely to get immediate results, but the collective effect of making these small changes over time is MUCH easier to sustain than your $ 99 a month gym membership to Bally’s, Golds, or that 24 hour fitness center. I don’t know about you, but I love saving money and even more importantly: time.

Please keep an open-mind and don’t be concerned so much about what other people believe, because this is very unique and you may get some funny looks, but you’ll get the last laugh with your new rock hard body! Honestly, most people are too self conscious to try something like this. If that’s the case for you, then that’s your loss.

Here is just how it works (these workouts can be done at home or even in your office):

As an alternative to doing your standard workouts of visiting the gym 3-4 times a week and doing your normal weight training and cardio routines for 45-60 minutes at a shot… with this method, you will be training for just a couple minutes at a time, many times throughout each day, 5-7 days/week.

The method will be composed of only bodyweight exercises done for about 2-3 minutes, 5-7 times per day, throughout each day. Now obviously if you work a typical office job, you are going to have to not be shy about carrying out a few exercises in your office and having your cube-mates watch you. Truly, I’ve found that some folks that have tried this have actually gotten their colleagues to join up with them!

Of course if you have a private office, then you don’t have to stress about anybody seeing you. If you work from home, or are a stay at home mom, then there’s no legitimate reason you can’t fit these in through the day while at home. If you end up having a busy day with meetings and so forth, and can only fit a couple of these 2-minute workouts in, then it will be worth it, but try to get as many done each day as you can.

If you’re on a normal 9-5 office schedule, I advise doing your 2-minute workouts every hour, on the hour, with the exception of lunch. As an example, you could try 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, and 4 pm.

Some of the bodyweight exercises that are the best to focus on are:

bodyweight squats (and variations)pushups (and variations)forward, reverse, or walking lungesup & down a staircase if one is availablefloor planks (holding the plank position from forearms and feet)floor abs exercises such as lying leg thrusts, ab bicycles, etc.This checklist is not absolutely extensive, but I wished to keep it fairly simple. If you understand other good bodyweight exercises, you can insert those to your program also. If you want to keep it easy and don’t like to get down on the floor for anything, you can stick to squats, lunges, and pushups and still get great results. The advantage here is that these are ‘real world’ exercises, and use your whole body.

The wonderful thing about these workouts is that you do enough in 2-3 minutes to get your blood pumping, heart rate up a bit, a big portion of your body’s muscles worked, and body temperature raised. Nevertheless, it’s normally not enough to break a sweat in only 2 or 3 minutes, so you don’t have to be concerned about sweating in the office or where ever you may be. For the most part, you could possibly just get a little moist on the skin.

One more advantage of this type of exercise is that now you don’t have to dedicate any time before or after work to going to the gym since you previously got your workouts little by little during the day. You’ve now got some additional free time (and money) on your hands!

Attempt this type of time-efficient workout routine out for 3-4 weeks and then go back to your typical gym routines. I think you’ll find that it was a fantastic way to break out of a plateau and stimulate new results in your body. You can easily try infusing in a cycle of these “mini” workouts every couple of months to keep things fresh.

Remember that this is only one method of exercise and doesn’t mean that you ought to only stick to this method without end. You will hit a plateau on any given training method, so I’d advise just rotating it into your System of various training methods. And by all means, don’t give much consideration to what other people think…get the willpower to try something a little different. In the end, you’ll be the one laughing back at all of the “negative people” at work that are giving you unusual looks while they eat their donuts!

If you really want more ideas like this and embrace the ‘get fit slowly’ lifestyle, then you’ll definitely want to sign up for the fithacker.org newsletter. I’ll put tips, hacks, recipes, and otherwise awesome stuff directly in your inbox. Also check out the tools page to see what I use at home to get better results than a gym.