There’s no denying the health benefits of regular exercise, and yet, maintaining a routine continues to be a challenge for many adults. Although 63.3 per cent of people in England are physically active, the pandemic has slowed down the lifestyles of a lot of people. Data from Sport England shows that the number of inactive adults increased by 2.6 per cent from 2019 to 2020.
Maintaining good health is reason enough to make exercising at home a habit. In this article, we’ll talk about its importance and provide examples of simple home workouts for adults.
Why Should You Work Out At Home?
Adults who spend most of their days at home have to make more effort into working out. Physical activity is important to one’s health, but staying at home (whether as a consequence of the pandemic or by personal choice) instantly limits the activities you could do. Unless your property is large enough for you to enjoy daily walks or runs, you need to do basic, at-home exercises to keep your muscles and joints in shape.
Here are other good reasons to work out at home:
- Weight management
- Lowers your risk for heart diseases, mental health issues, diabetes, arthritis, and other health problems
- Boosts your energy
- Improves your quality of sleep
- Regulates your metabolism
- Boosts your immune system
The lack of regular exercise can contribute to, if not directly cause diseases that would merit a full body CT scan or an x-ray scan (e.g., cardiac disease, calcification in the arteries, cancer, emphysema, masses in the liver, tumors, an accumulation of excess fluid) to get a correct diagnosis.
Exercises to Try at Home
1. Full-body cardio workout - Perform squat pulses, tuck-ups, and froggers as an exercise series, and you’ll experience a satisfying cardio workout that will let you exercise your legs, shoulders, and core. Do it in circuits first, with durations and repetitions adjusted according to your current endurance level. Once you get the hang of the circuits, go for AMRAP (as many repetitions as possible).
2. Plank workouts - Planking is an excellent core workout that can also strengthen and tone your arm muscles. Do the basic plank position — arms straight with your elbows below your shoulders, your hands and toes holding your body off the floor with your back and legs as straight as possible — and transition to pushups. Follow it up with a forearm plank reach and round out the cycle with burpees. If you want to get your arms and legs moving as well, insert skater exercises in-between the plank exercises.
3. HIIT workouts - High intensity interval training that usually includes burpees and mountain climbers takes only 10 to 30 minutes total. The individual exercises take only a couple of minutes each, but they will make you burn a lot of calories. You can start with push-ups then Russian twists and single-leg burpees. Lateral lunges, tuck-ups, mountain climbers, star jumps and squat thrusts maintain the high-intensity momentum until the end of the exercise series.
4. Chair exercises - The easiest in this list, chair exercises are very convenient because you don’t need anything other than a chair (the one you sit in when working from home will do for some of these exercises). Knee extensions and toe lifts can remove the kinks from your legs and feet after sitting for hours. Seated marches, seated rows and overhead presses, meanwhile, are good for stretching your arms and back muscles.
5. Dance workouts - If you enjoy dancing, you can pull off this exercise on your own with some freestyle dancing. If, however, you need some instruction, there are tons of dance exercise and zumba videos you can watch for free online. What’s great about dance workouts is that they start with a warm up, then progress to some simple and repetitive dance steps before moving on to more difficult moves. There are also videos for beginner adults and even seniors. They’re a good start for anyone who’s exercising and dancing for the first time!
6. Yoga - Like with dance workouts, yoga videos are abundant online. Choose instruction videos that match your experience and skill level, otherwise you might injure yourself trying to do moves that your body can’t do just yet.
What’s great about these exercises is they don’t need any gym equipment or a very large space. Anyone can do them, whether you are a beginner or someone with a well-used gym subscription. Choose the exercises that you can keep up with and make you feel satisfied when you’re done.
Take charge of your health where you can. Integrate these workouts into your daily routine and reap the many benefits of regular cardio and exercise.
If you have a condition that is causing you pain or discomfort then consider having a diagnostic test done at a Vista Health clinic. You will receive a report within 3 working days and this will help your GP or a specialist to treat the issue correctly. Contact your nearest clinic today.