17 Easy Home Fitness Workouts That Will Whip You Into Shape Fast

Home fitness is a big thing these days as not everyone’s a gym bunny, I know I’m not.

I’ve joined about four different gyms over the last twenty years or so, and the ‘novelty’ always wears off after about three months – no matter how much the ‘one part of my brain’ wants to be a devoted gym goer, but the other half which doesn’t, always wins!

Are you the same with gyms?

… and this is the reason why you’re looking into home fitness instead?

Snap!

So in my case, in order to totally not give up on exercise, I’ve also tried just about most home fitness workouts too.

And this is what this post is about.  More precisely, 17 home fitness workouts you can do to get fit from the comfort of your own home.

So if you’re like me and don’t want to join a gym and just want to get fit from home, then this blog post is for you.

At Home Workouts for Beginners

As I’ve said in the title of this blog post, these are 17 easy home fitness workouts and I’ve made that statement because there’s nothing complicated about doing each one.

There’s no complicated circuit training or fancy kick-boxing aerobic techniques, unless you want to choose to do that kind of workout that is.

They’re just good old-fashioned, grounded workouts that most able people can do from home.

So as I’ve just said above, I would suggest that you choose either one or two to start with and choose the ones which you’ll enjoy the most so you can keep at them long enough to see actual results.

When you start to see results, you get more motivated to keep carrying on with what you’re doing, because it’s working.

Home Exercises To Lose Weight

What’s your goal?

Are you exercising to lose weight?  Or are you exercising to tone up?  What about just upping your fitness levels?

Or do you want to do all three?

What’s your goal and motivation to exercise from home?

I know there’s a large percentage of women who want to exercise from home to lose weight as their main motivation.  This has always been the case for me too as you also get the added benefits of toning up and just being more generally fitter anyway.

Of course in order to lose weight you’re going to have to be following a healthy eating plan too, as exercise is only a small fraction to help you lose weight.

Apparently, the ratio to lose weight is 80/20.  Healthy eating equates for 80 percent of your weight loss efforts and only 20 percent of weight loss comes from exercise.

I’ve wrote about this more in-depth in my blog post “9 Simple Green Tea Diet Tips To Get You Into Shape.”

However having said that, if you stick to a weekly toning schedule, you can pull your everything up and in and you can actually go down a dress size just by toning up.  More on that soon.

I’ve always been told by gym trainers, that it’s a good idea to mix up your workouts with a combination of both cardio and toning.

And when I done my diploma in Anti Aging, part of the course was on the benefits of exercise for anti aging purposes.  So whenever I write blog posts on fitness and exercise, I always try to include an anti aging angle in them too.

So let’s start off with cardio.

Cardio does what it says – ‘cardiovascular training’.  You need to keep your heart healthy.

What Does Cardio Do For You?

You don’t need to do strenuous exercise if you don’t want to, as long as you do some form of movement each day to slightly raise your heart rate and make your forehead break out into a little sweat.

This could be as simple as going for a walk at a moderate pace or just doing some house work to music. But if you want a more structured cardio workout, then you could do one of the following…

Exercise DVDs & YouTube

If you have a television and a dvd player, then you could invest in some exercise workout dvds.

Popular dvds (by famous TV personalities) are a good fit for an all-round workout as normally they:

I have a few of these dvds at home and they all seem to follow the above standard format in one way or another.

So you would get both your cardio and toning workouts done with one dvd.  Do this 4-5 times a week and you will definitely start to see results.

Do you have a local library?  If so, then you could start by renting a couple of dvds out from your local library.  You can easily get second-hand ones from eBay or you could read the reviews on Amazon and make your purchase there.

Exercise Bike

An exercise bike is always a popular choice as a piece of home exercise equipment, especially the fold-away ones.

Exercise bikes are great for cardiovascular training whilst also burning off calories and toning your legs and thighs.

Rowing Machine

I loved the rowing machine at the gym, I would sit and row for ages as I found it very therapeutic.

If you have the space, then a rowing machine is a good choice for cardio.  You can also buy folding rowing machines too which you can push under your bed or put in a cupboard when not in use.

The rowing machine also tones your arms, stomach and thighs.

Cross Trainer

Once upon a time, most people couldn’t even entertain the idea of having an elliptical cross trainer at home because they were just so big.  But because home fitness is getting more popular, yes you’ve guessed it, you can also get folding cross trainers too.  If you don’t want a folding one, there are small, compact ones you can buy specifically for the home.

Cross trainers burn calories and they also tone up your legs, thighs and glutes (bottom)

Treadmill

Another of my favorites at the gym was the treadmill.  I never used to run on the treadmill, I used to walk at speed on an incline.  So if you don’t like jogging or running, then walking on the treadmill is just as good – especially when you walk on  a high incline.

The treadmill is great for toning all areas of your legs as well as giving you a pert bottom!

I have a treadmill which we keep in the garage.  It’s only a small compact one, not like the huge ones you see in the gyms but it does the job.  So if you have a spare room or garage, then you could get a treadmill for the home.

Exercise Trampoline

The last piece of cardio equipment I want to mention is the small trampoline or rebounder as they are sometimes known.  I used to have a one of these too but I sold it as I didn’t really enjoy bouncing up and down – but it’s all down to personal preference as some people love rebounding for exercise.

Even though they are small, they do still take up quite a bit of space in the home – well, unless you have a fairly large home that is.

Bouncing on the trampoline is good for the legs and bottom and burns up lots of calories.

Related Reading: 9 Essential Tips To Compile a Home Exercise Program That Suits You!

Resistance Training | Toning | Weights

Now we’ll move on to the toning section of your home fitness workouts.

Whist aerobic activity will do wonders for your heart, circulation and release of those ‘happy endorphins’, it’s the toning and strength exercises that will actually re-shape your body.  This is sometimes referred to as body sculpturing.

What Does Toning Do For You?

It’s becoming much more widely known that strength training is just as important for women as it is for men, especially as we get older.

These are the reasons why us women should set some time aside each week to do some form of strength training:

Strengthens Your Muscles

As we get older our muscles start wasting away and this in-turn makes us gain weight faster – and harder to get off.

Therefore strength training is actually very necessary to help keep our muscles toned and make them strong again.

Burns Fat

Cardio exercising speeds up your metabolism as you are actually working out and also for a little while after you’ve finished your workout.  However, with toning (resistance/strength training) speeds up your metabolism and burns fat 24 hours after you’ve finished your workout. This way you’ll be burning fat even while you sleep.

Re-Shapes Your Body

Because you’re toning your muscles, you’re also redefining and reshaping them too. This really is the only way you can truly change the shape of your body.

As you lose body fat, your muscles will also start to get stronger and define the true shape of your body. There’ll be no fatty bits bulking out over the top of your muscles, eventually there’ll just be your strong lean muscles, giving you a strong lean physique!

Related Reading: 9 Essential Tips To Compile a Home Exercise Program That Suits You!

How To Do Resistance Training

Ideally, you should do about 15-20 minutes of toning exercises three times a week.  You don’t need to go mad and do weights every day, not unless you’re targeting a different set of muscles.

For example:

But then of course you may want to do stomach toning exercises, legs and glutes.  So you’ll have to set yourself a little schedule as to what spots you want to work on each day, or each week. But if you’re doing your cardio workout on an exercise bike for example, then this will be toning your legs and glutes anyway, so you might just want to focus doing toning exercises for your stomach and arms.

Spot Training

Spot training is when you focus on just one spot on your body that you to improve upon.  If you’re happy with your body in general but your stomach needs a bit of toning up, then you could just focus on stomach exercises.

Or, if you feel that your bottom is a bit squidgy, then you might want to focus only on exercises to tighten your glute muscles.

You just focus on tightening up one ‘spot’.

YouTube

The best way to do weights from home is to head over to YouTube and type what area you want to focus on and find the best video for you.  There will be longer videos with overall toning exercises on which covers all the muscles in the upper and lower part of the body, or you can find shorter videos which spot train by only focusing on individual muscles.

Weights

The most popular and easiest way to tone up is by using some type of weights.

You don’t need an array of fancy weights going up in kg or pounds in weight, you just need one or two to keep pushing and strengthening your muscles.

It’s all the in the ‘reps’, which is repetitions.  You don’t want to ‘bulk up’, you just want to tone up and become leaner – am I right?

This done through slow repetitions with your 2 lbs weights in your hands. The slower you go and more more sets of repetitions you do, is how you tone up without getting buiky or too muscley,

Browse through YouTube videos from qualified fitness instructors who can teach and show you how to do weights (for women).

I quickly typed in ‘Arm Workout For Women at Home‘ and that’s what I found.  Just play around with the keywords that you type into the YouTube search bar to get the videos that you’re specifically looking for.

(DIY) Food Tins and Water Bottles

For arm exercises.

If you don’t want to spend any money on weights, then you can use two 400g tins of baked beans, or any other tins of food you have in your cupboard.  I’ve done this and they work really well.

The same applies to the standard 330ml or 500ml of bottled water.  Just fill two bottles with tap water, make sure the cap is on nice and tight, and away you go!

Wrist and Ankle Weights

These are a weighted strap which go around your wrists or ankles so you don’t need to physically grab onto any weights.  They normally come with a Velcro fastening.

I have a pair of wrist weights and I also have some light dumb bells and sometimes, when I’m feeling more fit than usual, I use both the dumb bells and the wrist weights at the same time.  Go me!

Dumb Bells

These are the most popular form of weights, especially for women.  You can start off with 1 kg and then progress to 2 kg but I would say that you don’t really need to go above 2 kgs to tone up and get rid of your flabby bits.  Remember what I said above, it’s all in the slow repetitions which gives you ‘the burn’, not using more heavier weights – that’s not necessary.

Kettle Bells

Funnily enough, I’ve actually just bought my very first kettle bell.  I was food shopping in Aldi (UK) and they were selling them in there pretty cheap so I bought myself a 4 kg one.  However, I haven’t used it yet so I can’t comment on a personal experience at the moment.

But again, if you have a quick look on YouTube, you can see the many different ways to use kettle bells to tone and strengthen different muscles and parts of your body.  And a quick search on Amazon also comes up with a few dvds for kettle bell workout for beginners & women.

Related Reading: 9 Essential Tips To Compile a Home Exercise Program That Suits You!

Exercise Bands

These are becoming more and more popular as a piece of home exercise equipment.  I haven’t actually used them myself, but Sean (my husband) does.  You can use them for a full body workout or just to target specific sets of muscles if you want to.

You normally buy a bag with different bands and handles in so it varies the types of workouts that you can do.

Yoga & Pilates

These are two favorites among women because they both help you connect with your body and reduce any stress you’re experiencing.

Both of these workouts work on your whole body to improve:

The Difference Between Yoga and Pilates?

From what I’ve noticed (and checked-up on before writing this), is that Yoga focuses to improve your flexibility by gradually increasing the flexibility of your joints.  Yoga also encourages you to use a system of breathing, meditation and movement to bring the body, mind and spirit together as one.

Whereas Pilates is more physical and focuses on strengthening your core to improve overall body strength and posture.

Again, you can head over to YouTube to find videos on the above two forms of exercising or you can buy dvds on Amazon.

Conclusion

So do you now feel that you could do some sort of home fitness workout to help you lose weight (if you need to ) and get fit?

There’s plenty of workouts to choose from and I’m sure you can find one or two which would suit you?  Even if you just browse through the vast array of dvds on Amazon, there are some really simple workouts for beginners

I even have a dvd with just walking and arm movement workouts:

>> Walk at Home Fitness Dvds

Or, if you don’t like doing any cardio, then give Yoga or Pilates a try as it burns fat as well as reshaping your body.

The bottom of the line is – just do whatever it takes to get you exercising at home.

Word of Caution

No matter what type of exercise you choose to do at home, please read or follow the instructions properly as you don’t have the advantage of a trainer supervising your moves as you would if you were in a class or at the gym.

You don’t want to do your body any damage, especially in the long run, so please be careful.

Related Reading: 9 Essential Tips To Compile a Home Exercise Program That Suits You!