How To Exercise At Home: The Expert Guied

We get it, your home is your comfort zone. It’s where you relax, unwind and binge on boxsets. The last thing we’d want you to do is turn it into a house of “No Pain, No Gain”.

But doing your exercise at home is much easier than you might think and saves on extortionate gym memberships, too. No need to trade in your sofa for a weights bench.

“All you need is a plan,” says Alex Marks, owner of PT studio On Your Marks in south London. “You can burn excess body fat, get physically fit, and look and feel better all from the comfort of your sitting room.”

How To Build A Home Gym

In this article, we’ll break down the six best bang-for-your-buck exercises you can do at home. Don’t start sawing away at your doorframe to try and squeeze the latest running machine into your living room just yet though.

Most of these are bodyweight exercises and can be done without equipment, and to see progress in your strength and stamina you merely need to add weights.

To give your home gym the edge, Marks suggests investing in a simple pair of dumbbells. “Check your ego and don’t go too heavy or they’ll be redundant for most exercises,” he says. “With light weights, you can always make a move more taxing by slowing down the tempo or increasing the number of reps.”

Make sure you have space to move freely as well, you don’t want to be knocking over your mum’s prize china.

We’ll also show you how to get going with a four-move home workout. No kit required. No excuses accepted. Do try this at home.

Six Of The Best Exercises To Do At Home

Romanian Deadlift

The Romanian Deadlift is the king of hinge movements, a set of exercises that revolve around your hips and specifically target your lower body.

Stand with your feet hip-width apart and a slight bend at the knees. Keep your shoulders retracted, chest proud and back flat as you fold forward at the hips until you feel a slight stretch in your hamstrings. Drive your hips forward and squeeze your glutes to reverse the movement and return to standing.

Keep In Mind…

“This targets the posterior chain of muscles running from your calves to your lower back – muscles we neglect when sitting at a desk for eight hours a day,” Marks says.

“Lengthening and strengthening your hamstrings and glutes will improve your lower body aesthetic balance, increase your muscle mass which in turn helps burn fat, reduce back pain and improve posture.”

Squat

If the Romanian deadlift is king, the squat is God. “They’re the best weapon in your arsenal against old age,” preaches Marks.

The key to a great squat is keeping your knees wide to activate the crucial muscles in your glutes and thighs. Stand with feet hip-width apart, and your toes slightly pointing out. Keeping your body upright and core braced, bend your legs with knees wide until thighs are parallel to the floor, then drive back up, squeezing your glutes at the top.

Bent-Over Row

This one – as with most pulling movements for the back muscles – requires kit. Grab a pair of dumbbells and hinge forward at your hips, keeping your knees slightly bent, the back flat and your core engaged.

Retract your shoulders to engage those upper back muscles and lift the weights until they’re level with your chest, then lower slowly. Experiment with different grips: palms facing back, forwards or each other.

The No-Kit No-Excuses Home Workout

Now you know the six super moves to try at home, here’s a kit-free workout using variations of each one from personal trainer Alex Gildea, owner of G:Fit London.

Reps And Sets

Perform each exercise for 30 to 45 seconds while resting – or howling profanities – as little as possible between movements. This is a timed circuit, so as opposed to counting reps, try and perform as many repetitions of the exercise as you can within that time limit. Three rounds is good. Four is great. Five is a blockbuster effort.