HOME EXERCISE FOR BEGINNERS.

Exercise By Any Other Name.

I can give you an endless list of reasons why there is a need for home exercise, especially for beginners. But it may be an exercise in futility unless you understand why you, and all the other humans, need regular physical exercise.

Let me make something very clear. This article is not a case for home exercise and against gym exercise. This is about exercise by any means necessary. If you understand why you need exercise and have the wherewithal for the gym, by all means, go for it. But for beginners, the best thing is home exercise.

When we say home exercise we’re talking to those who may feel they’re forever condemned and trapped out of shape just because:

1. The gym is out of reach for some reason – they’re too busy, too tired, can’t find a babysitter, can’t afford the gym, the gym is too far, etc.
2. They mistakenly think a meaningful workout can only happen in a gym.

The Concept of Home Exercise Gets a Bad Rap.

When compared to the billion-dollar gym industry pumping out a steady stream of paid advertising it shouldn’t come as a surprise that home exercise has become an afterthought.

Gone are the days though of cringe-worthy gimmicks like “8-minute abs” videotapes. Read on to see how it truly is possible to live a healthier life without leaving the house. 

Home Exercise for Overall Health.

Timing

A unique advantage to home exercise is the freedom to choose when you exercise and save time as you won’t be driving to and from the gym.

If you decide to exercise in the morning, keep in mind that upon waking up your body is more stiff from inactivity, and an emphasis on a proper warm up is important to prevent straining a muscle.

Conversely, if you are exercising in the evening after your body has been under the daily stress of work, then a shorter length of training is recommended to avoid overexerting yourself and increasing the chance of your technique breaking down.

Flexibility and Mobility

Stop for a moment and think about the daily activities you do all the time. Bending over to pick things up or to load the dishwasher. Reaching overhead to put dishes away in the cabinets. Sitting as you watch TV. What do all these tasks have in common? They occur in the frontal plane of your body and therefore use the same muscles in reoccurring movements

This creates imbalances in your body as neglected or rarely used muscles become weaker. The stronger muscles can pull your bones and joints out of alignment as your body compensates to keep you upright and functioning. Over time this can create pain, poor posture, and limited range of motion. For these reasons, it is extremely important that you incorporate flexibility (the ability for muscles to stretch), and mobility (the ability to move freely).

The stronger muscles can pull your bones and joints out of alignment as your body compensates to keep you upright and functioning.

Static stretching is holding a position that stretches your muscles, and dynamic stretching is an individual movement through a joint. Combing both will increase your overall flexibility and mobility.

How Conditioning Erases Fatigue (The ‘I’m too tired to exercise fallacy’).

At some point in life most everyone will tell themselves they can’t do something because they’re too tired, or just don’t have the necessary time. It’s important to realize that no one can tell you how to feel about something. If you say you feel tired after a long day or night, then how insulting would it be of me to tell you otherwise?

However, fatigue is like a smudge on a microscope, obscuring the true and clear picture through its lens. The two choices you’re left with are to accept this distorted view as reality or to wipe away the false narrative that you can’t exercise because you’re too tired to. Fatigue–be it physical, mental, or emotional is real but doesn’t have to overrun your ability to exercise at home.

The American author and motivational speaker Jim Rohn said it best:

“If you want something bad enough you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” 

Adaptability is key to survival

A change in time means a change in reality. By the same token, a change in reality requires changes in attitude, actions, and lifestyle.

Our bodies and minds are designed to seek out ways to make tasks as efficient as possible. From the days of our ancestors when food wasn’t readily available, the human body adapted by minimizing the energy we spend, and quick to store any excess energy (calories) as fat for future use.

This hardwired system in our DNA combined with the world we live in has resulted in quicker access to food and less time to work it off.

Society has become extremely successful at efficiency too. We constantly invent things to save time; cars to get places quicker, fast food restaurants to save time cooking, and Netflix because society finally got fed up having to put VHS tapes in an automatic rewinding machine before taking them back to Blockbuster. 

As counter-intuitive as “exercise will make you less tired” sounds—in the long run, it’s true. If you tell yourself that you’re out of shape, what you’re really saying is that your body is deconditioned. If you condition your body through regular exercise you will train your heart, lungs, and muscles to run more efficiently. Exercise builds strength making tasks easier and thus conserving energy. 

Beating Back Death’s Door.

You can find a million statistics with a quick internet search that highlight how living a sedentary life shortens the quality and quantity of your life.

Inactivity coupled with poor eating habits often leads to the leading cause death year after year–cardiovascular/heart disease, and by a deafening margin.

Cancer often gets more attention and awareness, but in a 2017 study, it only killed 9.56 million people globally. Care to guess how many heart diseases took? Nearly double that amount at 17.79 million.

But it’s not all doom and gloom I promise you. As I’ve already alluded to it is possible to improve your health and fitness from the comfort of your home in comfy pajama pants, fuzzy slippers, and even a favorite TV show on if that’s your style.

Starting with a home exercise routine to strengthen and condition your health will help to keep it resilient and potentially delay or prevent the grim reaper of heart disease. 

The Internal and the External Motivators

Your mind and body have a cyclical relationship – more or less as chicken and egg. But unlike chicken and egg debate, you must condition your mind before your body.

The first step is coming up with ‘why’ you want to exercise, and there are two types of motivators—internal and external.

An external motivator would be losing weight to look a different way, fit into a favorite outfit, compete in a 5k or other tangible goal. All external goals can be tracked with data, be it pounds lost, how long it takes to run a certain distance, etc. They can be a great way to motivate yourself to start working out, but it’s important to remember that you’ll need to constantly find new external motivators (goals) as you achieve current ones.

Conversely, internal motivators don’t have a tangible way to track them, but are instead driven by feelings. Remember that feelings dictate our actions.

Think about a child screaming in your the back seat of your car until you just can’t stand another moment of it. Well it goes both ways and if you can find something internally important to you then eventually you’ll find another voice even louder in the backseat of your brain.

Sure, life happens—you’ll have a bad day and small problems can snowball into major ones that result in hijacking your intentions to workout. Which is why strengthening your body allows your mind to use the energy reserves you have built, and in turn feel less anxious.

If you were being pulled underwater, your mind would focus on being able to breathe, so having the ability to stay afloat allows your mind to look for a long term solution.

How to Start Your Home Exercise Journey.

Depending on your goals, current activity level, and any physical restriction like injuries and health conditions) your workout will vary. The recipe for success is to give yourself the flexibility to modify workouts as needed.

Think of the following examples as a set of tools that you can choose from as the task requires. Stiff back from a rough night? Ease up on the strength-based exercises today and incorporate more mobility ones this time.

Feeling great and ready to push yourself, or having a rough day and need to channel those negative feelings into workout fuel? Then shorten the warm-up to save your energy for the more strenuous work.

Aerobic Workouts.

These are focused on improving your cardiovascular endurance and stamina while putting less stress on your muscles and joints. This doesn’t mean a million reps of effortless arm circles though. To be effective and actually train your aerobic capacity you need to raise your heart rate.

If fat loss is your goal then you’ll want to strive for 70-80% of your maximum heart rate for at least 20 minutes. It’s recommended that you don’t exceed 85% of maximum heart rate for optimum results.

Typically, someone at home will do strength based work, but could also include holding a series of yoga poses or other mobility based regimen. 

Table 1.1

Follow this formula:

Maximum Heart Rate (M.H.R) = 220 – Age

where Heart Rate = Beats Per Minute (B.P.M); and 220 = Constant. 

 Example: If your age = 40, your M.H.R = 220 – 40 = 180. Your Fat Burning Zone = 70-80% of M.H.R = 126-144 BPM. And your recommended limit of 85% = 153 BPM.

Monitoring your heart rate

There are a lot of heart rate monitors on the market with some tracking calories burned and other data if you’re interested in tracking your heart rate during your workouts.

The general rule of thumb is if you can hold a conversation while you’re working out then your moderate intensity is too low for fat loss according to the National Academy of Sports Medicine’s “talk test”. 

With vigorous intensity (as you’ll see later under the anaerobic exercise) it means that you will only be able to say a few words at a time while exercising before needing to catch your breath. The focus of the aerobic workout is non-stop movement throughout the entire duration.

Generally, if you have access to equipment at home like a treadmill, or stationary bike they are the simplest ways to achieve an aerobic workout.

If steady cardio seems boring, then completing a session while watching TV or listening to music may help. Alternatively, circuit training, which is completing multiple exercises in a row with little to no rest will yield the same effect.

Typically, someone at home will do strength-based work, but could also include holding a series of yoga poses or other mobility-based regimens. 

Read: Build lean muscle with a home workout routine

Workout and modifications

Below are sample aerobic workouts and modifications:

Aerobic Strength Circuit

Terminology: DB = Dumbbell;  Household Items – Milk Jugs, Books, Etc.

This 3:00 minute circuit should keep your heart rate between 75%-80% of your MHR. You can increase the difficulty with heavier weight/resistance and/or longer durations. For this circuit 10-15 minutes is recommended.

Anaerobic Workouts.

The purpose of an anaerobic workout is to do maximum effort in a short period of time. Your body can work hard or long, but not both because the longer your muscles work the less available energy they will have.

For someone exercising at home the most effective method of anaerobic work is interval training. Strengthening your muscles can help with correcting postural imbalances which may also alleviate or reduce chronic pain.

It can also help with injury reduction as everyone trips and slips in life. This is especially important if you are an older adult as your body will take longer to recover from trauma, and is more likely to suffer a bone fracture.

While it may surprise you, many studies have been done to examine how heavy resistance training directly affects bones by making them stronger and denser. 

Different approaches

A simple technique of anaerobic home exercise is splitting muscle groups into separate workouts depending on how much time you wish to dedicate to training.

Choosing one day to train your upper body and another for the lower half is a common way to do so. You could also choose to combine pushing muscles (chest, shoulders, triceps, quads, calves) into one session and pulling muscles (hamstrings, back, biceps, and core) into another.

If you’re beginning to exercise at home and are not someone regularly working out an easy method is to complete an exercise during commercial breaks, and then rest when the program is on. As your conditioning improves you may want to consider harder exercises with shorter breaks in between. With just your body weight, dumbbells, or various items around the house you can get a great workout without formal gym equipment.

Remember that the goal of anaerobic work is doing the hardest work for a short period of time, and with dedicated recovery time between exercises and training sessions. This type of training puts more stress on your central nervous system which needs downtime to recover.

Anaerobic Strength Circuit

Terminology: DB = Dumbbell; Household Items – Milk Jugs, Books, Etc.

NOTE – Rest for 20 seconds between each exercise

*Note: for bent-over exercises, it is important to keep you back flat and not rounded or overly arched (rest) 60 seconds – then repeat the entire circuit.

To prevent a breakdown in technique and thus increased risk of injury it is recommended to complete 3-4 rounds with each taking around 3:30 minutes.

Understanding the Relationship Between Exercise and Nutrition.

Have you ever wondered why so many people struggle to lose weight despite regularly exercising?

Maybe you’ve found yourself in this pitfall. If so, then understandably, you may have grown frustrated to the point of quitting. You aren’t alone, and the single most important factor in any type of weight loss or a healthier lifestyle is nutrition.

Is it diet or nutrition?

Notice that I use the word nutrition and not diet. If you tell yourself that you are going on a diet, then you are framing proper nutrition and healthier eating habits as a short term behavior; often until reaching an external goal.

The folly of this thinking is that soon after obtaining the success you are likely to slide back into old habits, is which mentally defeating. So how do you overcome this trap? It starts with changing the way you view nutrition and exercise.

As mentioned a diet, whether intentional or not, is a mindset of short term changes. Think of a healthy lifestyle as a lifelong routine instead. Your body is an amazing machine capable of tremendous changes, but the foods you eat will either hinder or help your physical and mental capabilities.

If you’ve ever set a New Year’s goal of becoming healthier then you may have started strong only to stumble and eventually fell back into old habits. You’re not alone, as most fitness resolutions include an attempt to eat “perfect”, which isn’t obtainable because it doesn’t exist.

A sudden and drastic change from a sedentary lifestyle to exercising seven days a week for hours on end is also the quickest way to burn yourself out. Setting realistic short and long term goals, and having a plan to execute will help keep you focused.

A sudden and drastic change from a sedentary lifestyle to exercising seven days a week for hours on end is also the quickest way to burn yourself out.

The Power of Writing Down Your Goals.

Have you ever began driving somewhere new without a map or clear directions? It’s maddening to make a wrong turn and literally spin your wheels as you search for your destination.

Becoming more active and healthy is exactly like this, which is why a plan will act as your GPS to help you find your way. A few eye-opening stats from a Harvard study showed the following: 

• 83% of respondents had no goals.

• 14% of respondents had plans but had not written them down. The study found that this group was ten times more likely to succeed than those without any goals.

• 3% of respondents had written down their goals. They were three times more likely to succeed than the group who had some plan in mind. (Which makes them thirty times more likely to succeed than the group with no goals.)

So as you embark on becoming more active through exercise, and encompassing more nutritious eating habits, you are far more likely to maintain your new lifestyle if you write down the internal and external goals you want.

Pay attention to small victories

Small victories and milestones are rewarding and help build landmarks that you can clearly look back on if you feel yourself sliding backward. Just like exercising there will be days your nutrition isn’t what you planned; a binge on junk food, or an extra round of drinks with friends after work. These are okay!

Forcing yourself into always denying these things will build stressful pressure until you finally give in because will power isn’t infinite.

Know that becoming healthier is a balance of healthy and unhealthy choices.

If it helps, you can attribute every workout and healthy meal as one step forward. Missing workouts and those less than healthy meals are a step backward. As long as your steps forward outpace your steps backward then eventually you will reach your goals.

Conclusion

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Stupid!

As evident in this article, your health is extremely important because it impacts everything in your life. Improving your fitness through exercise is entirely possible at home, and with the sample programs listed in this editorial, you have the tools to get started.

Knowing why home exercise or just exercising is important and how to start is great. But remember that before you dive into your new lifestyle you first have to dedicate yourself to finding your internal and external motivators.

No one else can tell you what they should be; it is completely up to you to decide what matters the most. In the end, this is what will carry you through your challenges along the way.

Start small and allow your successes to build upon each other as the new neural pathways in your brain strengthen. Through a combination of soul searching, accountability, and grace you can create a healthier life, with home exercise or otherwise.