Just because the weather is cold, miserable and wet doesn't mean you can't do a great workout right inside your own home. Actually most of the bodyweight exercises are the hardest to do and you can have lots of fun with the different combinations. Bodyweight exercise got its name because your own body provides all the resistance needed to help you get fit. You can address every muscle in your body with hundreds of exercises that can be performed in a small space and adapted for your fitness level. It’s a simple answer to the challenges of weather, time constraints, finances, or just plain boredom.

What Are The Health Benefits of Bodyweight Exercise

These training sessions are highly efficient. Since you are not using equipment, you spend minimal time transitioning from one exercise to the next, so your heart rate stays up. You get both cardiovascular and strength training at the same time. It’s not necessary to do two separate workouts to achieve both types of fitness. If you do your exercises slowly, you can increase their intensity. And you can alternate your exercises between cardio and strength training, or low impact and high. There is no end to the flexibility of these routines.

Your core strength is improved. You have 29 pairs of muscles in your pelvis, abdomen, and lower back that form your core, which is important for maintaining strength, coordination, and balance in your everyday activities, from lifting shopping bags to working in your garden to walking your dog.

You'll be more flexible. Increased strength without flexibility and range of motion won't do you much good. Good posture and athletic performance require good flexibility, so that you can bend and stretch with ease.

Your balance will improve. As you progress into more difficult routines, your balance will improve, which gives you better body control and lower your risk of falling, especially if you’re elderly. The best part about bodyweight training is both young and old can complete them, there is no limit here to what is possible.

Make Sure You Have Good Technique

Exercising at home is a great way to beat the winter blues and escape the restrictions of many other exercise programs.

However, it's critical to understand that you shouldn't just go flinging your body around or acting as if you are invincible whether you’re at the gym or in your own home. If you focus on proper form, you will gain the most benefit and minimize your risk of injury. Every person is different, so there are many "correct" ways to exercise. Because we're all different, what works for one person may do little for another. You may need to speak to us or experiment a little until you find the exercise routine that works best for you, so the benefits to your mental and physical health will be specific to your needs.

Watch the video below for a good explanation of why technique is so important, and why you should never sacrifice form to do more reps.

Which Are The Best Home Exercises?

There really is so many exercises you can use with your own body-weight. From squats to lunges, to push-ups and pull-ups there really is a large variety of movements you can use. 

These are no best exercises for everyone as they are all great in their own way. The most important thing to understand is they work best when used together. I see many people just do push-ups every day and while this is a great exercise it can create problems if abused like this. 

To give you a helping hand make sure you get a copy of our Free Report on Functional Training below as this gives you all the exercise instructions complete with pictures of all the main body-weight exercises you can use in yoru own home.

What About Cardio?

Another great form of easy at home workouts to do is cardio training. In the form of running, cycling, skipping, stairs, boxing, the list can go on and on. But before you sigh and think, “I don’t have enough time, or, I hate running.” I am going to show you that there is any easier way to get great results and YOU ONLY NEED 5-10 MINUTES! How is this possible? Easy, by using HIIT training or High Intensity Interval Training.

Research Overwhelmingly Supports HIIT

Compelling and ever-mounting research shows that the ideal form of exercise is short bursts of high intensity exercise. Not only does it beat conventional cardio as the most effective and efficient form of exercise, it also provides health benefits you simply cannot get from long slow cardio, such as a tremendous boost in human growth hormone (HGH), aka the "fitness hormone." One study published in the Journal of Obesity reported that 12 weeks of HIIT not only can result in significant reductions in total abdominal, trunk, and visceral fat, but also can give you significant increases in fat-free mass and aerobic power.

Other research published in the journal Cell Metabolism showed that when healthy but inactive people exercise intensely, even if the exercise is brief, it produces an immediate measurable change in their DNA.

Several of the genes affected by an acute bout of exercise are genes involved in fat metabolism. Specifically, the study suggested that when you exercise your body almost immediately experiences genetic activation that increases the production of fat-busting (lipolytic) enzymes.

Which HIIT Workout Is Right for You?

There are a large number of variations when it comes to HIIT. One of the most popular is the Tabata Method, which calls for just 20 seconds of all-out drop-dead effort, followed by a mere 10 seconds of rest.

This intense cycle is repeated eight times. It has the nickname of “4 Minute workout from Hell!” When this method was performed four times per week for six weeks, participants in one experiment increased their anaerobic capacity by 28 percent, and their VO2 max (an indicator of cardiovascular health) and maximal aerobic power by 15 percent. This is in contrast to the control group, who performed an hour of steady cardiovascular exercise on a stationary bike five times a week. These participants improved their VO2 max by just 10 percent, and their regimen had no effect on their anaerobic capacity.

There is no right or wrong here just mix it up all the time to get variety in your workout. For those of you just starting out with HIIT, you may want to try a slightly easier version first. This version works by doing 30 seconds fast as you can followed by a 90 second rest.

Eg 30 second sprint uphill followed by 90 second walking.

Start off your first few times just doing this 3-4 times and as you get fitter, keep adding repetitions until you can do 10 in a row. And if six is what your body is telling you, then stop there. If you have a history of heart disease or any medical concern please get clearance from your health care professional to start this.

Here are the core principles:

1. Warm up for five minutes - A fast walk or a jog will do.
2. Exercise as hard and fast as you can for 30 seconds. You should be gasping for breath and feel like you couldn't possibly go on another few seconds. It is better to use lower resistance and higher repetitions to increase your heart rate
3. Recover for 90 seconds, still moving, but at slower pace and decreased resistance
4. Repeat the high-intensity exercise and recovery 3-10 more times.
5. Cool down for a few minutes afterward by cutting down your intensity by 50-80 percent

Great circuit workouts with body-weight exercises are shown in the videos below.

And if you would like to know more about these programs and many of our other exciting Personal Training packages fill in the form below as we would love to hear from you and get you started.