With a lack of equipment and limited time and motivation on your hands, it’s important now more than ever to stay healthy and keep exercising. Bodyweight exercises are easy to do and this home workout for beginners is the best way to get used to doing them before moving on to more advanced workouts.
This workout won’t win any awards, but it will give you a good base to start introducing more complex exercises to your bodyweight workouts and it will still help you build some muscle and your body fat down.
Try to complete this circuit three times with a 30sec rest between each move. Take a two-minute breather after each run through.
The warm up
It’s vital to get your muscles warmed up and get the blood pumping before your workout really begins. Do the following exercises and then you can also do a quick set of stretches.
- 30sec jogging on the spot
- 30sec star jumps
- 30sec shoulder rolling
- 30sec hip rotations
- 30sec ankle rotations
After that is completed, you can do some stretches that you like to loosen all your muscles and get yourself ready to start the hard part.
Time to go.
- Press-ups – 1min
Everyone should be able to do a press-up and no bodyweight workout is complete with them in one form or another.
- With your hands on the floor shoulder-width apart, extend your arms and raise yourself up onto your toes.
- Your body should form a straight line from your head to your heels. Squeeze your stomach to stop your midriff from sinking towards the floor.
- Flex at your elbows and lower your chest until it's an inch from the ground. Breath out and push back up to the starting position. Feel a burning in your chest? That's your pecs being born.
- Sit-ups – 1min
If you want a strong and solid core with visible abs then you will need to get familiar with sit ups.
- Lie down on the floor with your feet flat and legs bent at the knees.
- Lightly place your hands behind your head. Breathe out and lift your upper body until it creates an imaginary V-shape with your legs.
- Feel the contraction in your stomach and lower yourself to the starting position while inhaling.
- Squats – 1min
Squats are one of the best full body exercises you can do and work a wide range of muscle groups.
- Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart.
- Begin the movement by shifting your weight onto your heels, flexing your knees and sitting back with your hips.
- Keeping your head and chest up, squat down as low as you can before quickly reversing the motion and returning to the start position.
- Lunges – 1min
Single leg moves are excellent for supercharging your sports performance. Lunges will burn calories and build strong powerful muscles.
- Stand upright with your feet shoulder width apart. Lunge forward as far as you can with your right leg, bending your trailing knee so it almost brushes the floor.
- Use the heel of your right foot to push your upper body back to the starting position.
- Repeat with the opposite leg.
- Burpees – 1min
We won’t lie, burpees are like marmite, but people who say they love them must be crazy. Apart from that, they are very good for you and an excellent full body exercise to burn fat and build muscle.
- Stand up straight with your arms by your sides and your feet at shoulder width.
- Squat down and place your palms on the floor in front of you. Kick your legs out behind you so that you are in a push-up position.
- Now pull your legs back under you into the squat position, jump into the air with your arms above your head and beware of any low-hanging light fittings. That's one rep.
Now you get a 2 minute break and you will need to complete this circuit twice more with a 2 minute break at the end of each run through of the exercises.
