17 Best Free Weight Exercises to Build Strength Anywhere
Unlike plain walking, lifting the knees high and swinging the arms works both the lower and upper body, priming the body to burn fat right from the start. Losing weight feels like a battle between time, energy, and motivation. But fat loss doesn’t always require an expensive gym membership or complicated machines. Simple, easy-to-do exercises at home can be powerful enough to help lose extra kilos, boost energy, and improve overall health.
With just your body weight and a little creativity, you can design a full-body workout to gain strength and build both muscle and a sense of accomplishment. Ideally, you want to get your thighs parallel to the ground or lower but don’t force it if your mobility isn’t ready for that deep of a squat position yet. It will improve over time as you keep practicing squatting.Once your body weight feels too easy, it’s time to grab something heavy. You don’t need dumbbells—use household items like a backpack filled with books.
When employing bodyweight exercises, prioritize function. When designing a functional fitness program, keep it fun and add variety to keep it interesting. Plus, at-home workouts are simple, fun, and effective. Check out our motivation tips and full-body workouts to help you get started on your home workout regimen. As you get stronger and need more of a challenge, weights will be your new best friend.
They’re ideal for those with specific fitness or social goals. Lunges are excellent for strengthening the quads, hamstrings, and glutes and improving balance. They also work on your hip flexibility and coordination, which makes them a great functional exercise. We’ll be hitting biceps and back with bodyweight and the same easy broomstick and chairs setup as we used in Workout A. We’re also going to be hitting the shoulders and triceps with some excellent bodyweight selections.
Start with beginners’ workouts on the best Pilates apps and work your way up. If you don’t have time (or motivation) to go to the gym, doing simple exercises at home can be just what you need. Regardless of the space you have or your goals, there are simple and effective workouts you can do from the comfort of your home that can make a big difference.
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- Your chest strength will soar doing dumbbell flyes, which can be done on a bench or lying on the floor.
- If you’re new to jump squats, start with two sets of five repetitions.
- If you have a bad back, talk to your doctor before starting this exercise.
- Substitute or skip any exercises that cause pain or discomfort.
- Assume a high plank position and complete the pushup in the same way, allowing your elbows to flare out at a 45-degree angle.
- Keep self talk positive – There’s no reason to talk down about yourself, no matter how unfit you might be.
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Adding omega-3 to your diet appears to improve metabolism, which in turn helps reduce weight gain. Most of us consume too much sugar in our diet and sugar is empty calories which means it offers no nutritional value. Significantly reducing the amount of added sugar in your diet may help with weight loss. Poor sleep disrupts both cortisol and blood glucose levels.
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Lunge: 3 sets of 15 reps (each side)
It mainly targets your calf muscles while the glutes and hamstrings also provide support. As the standard calf raise, it improves overall lower-body stability, strength, and balance. Knee push-ups include many of the same benefits as push-ups. Some of the main ones include toning the upper body, building core strength, and reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. The final madmuscle review routine is an advanced version geared toward experienced fitness gurus who have already mastered the previous exercises. Like the other routines, it targets all major muscle groups.
Simple Home Workouts for Beginners to Get Fit Fast
Our 10-Minute Workout At Home can be your perfect backup plan. Whether it’s your spouse, neighbor, or a friend across the country on video chat, having someone expecting you to show up creates powerful accountability. Schedule specific workout times together and share your progress—the social connection makes exercise feel less like a chore. This format gives you about 20 minutes of actual exercise time, plus your 5-minute warm-up and 5-minute cool-down to complete your perfect 30-minute session. HIIT makes it mighty – High-intensity interval training packs the punch of much longer workouts into that precious half hour.
Effective No-Equipment Workouts You Can Do at Home
Please note that we may earn commissions when you click on our links and make purchases. However, this does not influence our reviews and comparisons. We strive to maintain fairness and balance in our content to assist you in making the best choices. This can seem harder, but it actually makes it easier as you don’t have to rely on your abdominal muscles as much in the beginning. Usually, you’re supposed to raise your feet from the floor to engage the muscles more and make it more challenging.
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Kneeling Jump
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Just moving more in your everyday life will help with your weight loss, increase motivation and make you feel good. This should help you get started with a bodyweight training routine. But we hear frequently that people want MORE instruction, MORE guidance, and MORE workouts.
Start with our beginner routine, and in just a matter of months, you could be well on your way to mastering the advanced routine. Plank off your foot instead of your knee for a full-body challenge in this hip abduction. Put your feet on an elevated surface, like a bench or a step, and complete an elevated pike pushup. Lifting one leg will put more weight on your other three limbs, increasing the challenge. When the intermediate routine becomes a breeze, try these advanced moves.
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The minute you label a food, such as cakes and biscuits, as “bad” you’re more likely to crave them more. Eventually, willpower will give in, and you’re more likely to overeat your “bad foods”. Weighing yourself more than once a month is an unhelpful behaviour which can alter your food choices in the day. Using cutlery to eat, rather than your hands, means you’ll naturally eat slower.
If you’re new to working out, Mathe suggests going slowly and focusing on form. Take it from Mathe – you don’t need fancy equipment to get a solid workout (no matter what Peloton stans say). It’s important to evaluate whether Beachbody On Demand continues to meet your fitness needs as we enter 2025.