Home Exercise Tips
With all our busy schedules these days, sometimes getting to the gym is just more of a time requirement than anything else. And when time is scarce, it seems like we always have so many other things to do than hit the gym. In just a few weeks, you can fall out of your regular exercise routine, and before you know it, several months have gone by and you’ve put on weight you wished you hadn’t. By exercising at home, you can create the perfect scenario so your busy lifestyle does not interfere with your exercise. Here are some great tips to make sure you home exercise routine remains something you stick to.
First, figure out what your goals are. Is weight loss your goal? Are you simply in maintenance mode? Do you want to build muscle mass or increase muscle tone? The reason this is important is because this will guide you into waht exercises and exercise equipment you will need. If you are in maintenance mode and don’t want or need to use weights at all, that’s fine. In this case, a cardio machine will do. If building muscle mass or tone is your desired outcome, then you are going to need to type of weight set, even if it is just a full set of quality dumbbells.
Second, always do a warm up. The minimum warm up is 3 minutes. Even at home, you still must follow safety precautions to avoid injury. I understand that we’re exercising at home to save all that time driving back and forth to the gym, but a warm up is critically important. I don’t have the room here to explain in detail why (physically) it is very important that you warm up, but always do it. It can consist of a bodyweight circuit that gets blood flowing or a gentle walk. Personally, I prefer a warm up that consists of several different bodyweight exercises that cover off all the major muscle groups. This gets the entire body warmed up, instead of just primarily the legs (when doing walking.)
Third, look for ways to keep it fun. This is a great benefit to home exercise. You can listen to music while exercising and that keeps it fun. You can also watch the news or some other program on TV, and in this case you can be using your exercise time for double use (like catching up on your favorite TV shows). Of course, you can listen to music at the gym and watch TV as well (in most gyms, but not all). But that always involves head phones. At home, I can just let the boom box blast my favorite music without having to have ear buds in my ears. It’s just more comfortable. Making your exercise time fun and efficient will make sure that you actually look forward to it, instead of dreading it as something you “have” to do.
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