Fitness Destinations

There are a lot of reasons why people want to workout at home, and there are many benefits to doing so. However, if you are considering working out at home, why not make it easy on yourself, as well as ensure success by doing it right?

The following list of 7 Simple Tips on How to Workout at Home will help you make the most of your home workouts, thus ensuring the success of your fitness and weight loss efforts!

1) Creating a Space

One of the most important tips about working out at home is that you must have a space that is dedicated to exercising. Ideally that space would be permanent and you would not have to put away your exercise equipment when you were done with it.

However, even if your ability to workout at home hinges on sharing your exercise space with common areas of the house (living room, dining room, basement, etc.), you must have a space that can be used at least part-time for exercising. If you do not have an area where you can easily do your home workouts, then you will end up not doing them, because:

• You won't take your workouts seriously if you are in an area of your house that doesn't "feel" like an exercise area.
• If you have to struggle with finding a place to workout on any given day, then it will become a hassle, and you simply won't do it. 

2) Minimal Equipment

You do not need an excessive amount of exercise equipment in order to do effective home workouts. A good set of dumbbells and an exercise ball are a great place to start, and you can expand from there only if you desire – it is not necessary. There are dumbbell exercises and exercise ball exercises that are radically effective if done properly and consistently.

If you allow yourself to believe that you need a lot of equipment before you can effectively workout at home, then it may not end up happening for 2 reasons:

• You may not have enough room in your home for a large stash of exercise equipment.
• The more exercise equipment you need, the more it will cost you to set up your home workout area.

In addition, although it never hurts to have access to a good treadmill or elliptical trainer, you can also get a great cardiovascular workout by doing plyometric exercises such as jumping jacks and high jumps, or doing circuit-style training that keeps your heart rate elevated for the entire workout.

3) Scheduling a Time

Setting aside a time for working out at home is just as important as setting up a place to workout. For many people it is difficult in the beginning to workout at home because there is no time when they "have to" do it. They think that since they can just get up and go workout whenever they want to that they will just do it later.

"Later" keeps getting pushed further and further back in the day, and before you know it, the entire day has gone by and you still haven't done your workout! Make it a part of your daily routine to exercise, and even put it on your calendar if you need to so that you don't schedule something else during your workout time. 

4) Removing Distractions

It is very easy to get distracted when you are working out at home because you have so many options for what you could be doing at any given moment. Between your own chores or responsibilities and the demands of your family members, neighbors, and even your pets, what started out as a planned workout can quickly become less than productive.

Whatever it is that you could be distracted by, be sure to remove it before you start exercising. That could include anything from turning off your telephone and your TV, to telling the people in and around your house that you are unavailable during your exercise time. It may take a few workouts before the new procedures become a habit for you and everyone else, so be sure to stick it out past the initial confusion. Everything smooths out pretty quickly.

5) Staying Motivated

For some people, it is difficult to be motivated in the home environment. It is not the environment that people generally associate with exercise, and without other people there who are also exercising, it can be easy for your motivation to leak away.

The best way to counter this is to do everything that you can to take your mind out of the home environment. Put on your headphones and rock out while you are exercising, use that time to listen to motivational or empowering audio programs, or even turn on the local health and fitness channel on the television to provide an appropriate backdrop for your exercise session.

6) Toys

A lot of people don't know it, but there are some incredibly fun electronic toys that you can play with at home that will allow you to have some fun while you are exercising!

The EyeToy Kinetic is a total blast and can deliver some amazingly difficult workouts while actually putting yourself inside the game.

Yourself Fitness is another gaming system where your virtual trainer Maya guides you through everything that you are supposed to be doing.  In addition to over 500 exercises, Yourself Fitness also comes with meal planning, over 4,500 recipes, and even shopping lists.

QMotion FunFitness is another system where you actually interact with the environment on your television screen, while playing racing games that you already own. Very cool stuff!

Here are pictures of each of the products listed above:

In addition to the game-related exercise systems listed above, there are also thousands of exercise and fitness DVD's that you can choose from in order to get a great home workout, and most of them require very little exercise equipment.

7) Nutrition

And finally, when working out at home, you have the ability to plan your nutritional intake to get the maximum benefit from your home workout program.

People who workout at a gym tend to either workout on an empty stomach, or wait too long after they workout before they get the calories that the body needs in order to recover properly from their workout.  

Ideally you would ingest some healthy calories one to two hours before exercising, and then again one to two hours after your workout. To find out what type and amount of calories you should be taking in based on your fitness goals, check out Nutrition Generator, which is an in-depth system of both planning and tracking your nutritional intake. 

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The Bicep Concentration Curl is an effective bicep exercise because it will isolate the bicep muscle, while at the same time giving a point of leverage so that you can move more weight, resulting in faster progress.

Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to almost 2,000 exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

Bicep Concentration Curl

Start with your feet flat on the floor, wider than shoulder width apart. Grab the dumbbell and then brace the back of your elbow against the inside of the knee. 

Keeping your feet firmly planted on the ground, simply curl the weight up towards your shoulder, hold for 1 to 2 full seconds, then slowly return to the starting position before repeating the movement. Be sure that your upper body does not move as you start to get fatigued. This will cause the exercise to lose its effectiveness, and could also lead to injury. 

Click here to see a massive list of websites that teach people to exercise!

For years both men and women have been searching for that perfect abdominal training routine that would give them a sexy mid-section. It is a process that can broken down into two simple steps, both of which are detailed here.

Step 1 is to do effective abdominal exercises. You can work your abs 3 times per week for 30 minutes straight, but if you aren't doing effective abdominal exercises, you will not see very much progress from all of that effort.

When it comes to abdominal exercises – as with all exercises – it is a matter of quality, not quantity. The same basic crunch that one person uses effectively to strengthen their abs will do very little for a different person who does the same exercise, but only goes for quantity, not quality.

Quality abdominal exercises are movements that are done with proper form, that are held for 1 or 2 FULL seconds at the moment of peak contraction, and that involve very little rest. In addition, a good abdominal exercise routine will involve working your abs from several different angles, rather than just the basic "crunch" movement.

The details of how to do quality abdominal exercises will be shown more in the section below that shows the abdominal exercise pictures.

Step 2 of the process to get a sexy abdominal area is to have a low level of bodyfat. Even if you have a good abdominal exercise routine, if your level of bodyfat is not low enough, you'll never see those rock-solid abs. Your abs will be stronger, and you'll have a stronger and more functional core, but without cutting down your bodyfat to a low enough level, you won't actually be able to see all of that hard work.

I won't take up a bunch of space in this post talking about how to lower your bodyfat, but if you want to get more information on some effective methods for doing so, check out the following posts:

• Top 2 Methods of Losing Bodyfat
• Best Weight Loss Program: Interval Training
• How to Know if your Cardiovascular Training is Intense Enough

The following abdominal exercises are all very effective at strengthening and toning up the abdominal area, and you can use all 6 of these to make up an effective abdominal exercise routine that can be done 2 or 3 times each week.

There are some general guidelines that apply to each exercise:

1. Hold each exercise at the point of peak contraction for 1 to 2 seconds.
2. Do each exercise immediately following the previous exercise – do not rest in between exercises.
3. Unless your abs are already in really good shape, you should not be able to do more than 15 to 25 repetitions of each exercise. If you can, then you aren't holding your peak contractions long enough to properly fatigue your abdominal muscles, or you are resting in between exercises.

Weighted Crunch

The Weighted Crunch can be done as shown here with an exercise plate behind your head, but I find it much more comfortable to do it holding a dumbbell overhead. When using a dumbbell, be sure to hold the dumbbell at arm's length, keep a firm grip on it, and keep it above your head at all times. The entire point behind holding the dumbbell is to make your upper-body heavier so that your abs have to work harder in order to lift your upper body off of the floor.

Point of Peak Contraction: Shoulders and upper back are completely off of the ground and your upper body is being held off of the ground solely by the contraction of your abdominal muscles.

The Ball Exchange

This exercise is great because it involves both lifting your upper body off of the ground, as well as your lower body. It is a radically effective movement, and you will get the most out of it by making sure that your upper body comes up off of the ground as far as possible during each repetition. Also, make sure that you are raising as well as lowering your upper and lower body at the same time. Part of the effectiveness of this exercise is the neuromuscular coordination that it develops.

Point of Peak Contraction: When you are switching the ball from your legs to your arms or from your arms to your legs. Again, be sure to hold that position for 1 to 2 full seconds. 

Ankle Wiggles

This exercise looks easy, and in fact, at first, it can be. However, the point of peak contraction for this exercise is the "shoulders up" position that you see in this graphic, and you maintain that shoulders up position the entire time that you are doing this exercise.

Also, be sure to keep your heels as far away from your body as possible, while still allowing the ends of your fingertips to just barely reach the back of your heels on each repetition. The point of this exercise is to keep that peak contraction the entire time, but to also work your oblique muscles, which are the muscles that run down both sides of your abdominal wall. 

Double Crunch

As with the Ball Exchange, the Double Crunch requires that you lift both your upper body as well as your lower body off of the ground. However, rather than exchanging an exercise ball, in this movement you are are simply bringing your upper body and your lower body as close together as possible. DO NOT pull on your head in order to accomplish that! In fact, it is best to not even interlock your fingers behind your head, as that will tempt you to pull your head up, which puts you in danger for injury, and it also eliminates some of the effectiveness of this exercise.

Point of Peak Contraction: When your knees are close to your chest, and your upper body is completely up off of the ground. 

Reverse Crunch

The Reverse Crunch can be done with your hands behind your head, or with your hands down at your sides. In either case, however, be sure to focus on your abdominal muscles as you pull your legs up, and then curl yourself into a ball as much as possible. The more you try to curl yourself into a ball, the harder the exercise will be. When you first get started with this movement, it is sometimes helpful to hold onto a bench or pad that you are laying on. However, as soon as you master the movement, try to break away from the need to hold onto anything as you do the exercise.

Point of Peak Contraction: When your legs and hips are completely off of the ground, and you are rolled up into as tight of a ball as you are strong enough to get into. 

Hip Raises

This exercise is very difficult, even if it doesn't look like it. The temptation will be to do a pseudo-reverse curl and bring your legs back toward your head. However, doing so will eliminate much of the effectiveness of this exercise. Your legs should go up in a straight line, remaining as close as possible to a 90-degree angle with the floor. Also, try to keep your head down on the floor and focus 100% on using your abdominal muscles to push your hips up off of the floor.

Point of Peak Contraction: When your hips are no longer in contact with the floor and they have been elevated as far as you are physically able to elevate them. 

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Abdominal Exercises
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Fitness ProgramsIf you do these 6 exercises properly for between 15 and 25 repetitions each, holding each exercise at the point of peak contraction for 1 or 2 FULL seconds, I guarantee your abs will get an incredible workout!

The pilates exercises are very functional in giving very smarty shape to the body of a person by burning out all extra fats. The pilates workout are very productive in loosing the weight of the obese persons if they regularly take exercises via pilates, very useful fitness machine.

If you have ever done any type of endurance cardiovascular training, you are probably familiar with “the wall”. In a nutshell, it is the point at which your body runs out of easily assessable carbohydrate energy to power your workout, and you just flat run out of steam.

Well, if you don’t know what you are doing, this can either be the end of your workout, or it can be a very damage-inducing physiological state if you don’t handle it properly. However, if you are familiar with what it all means, not only can you keep your training going, but you can burn through a very high level of bodyfat at the same time!

Energy Sources

There are 3 macronutrients that we ingest into the human body, and each one of them can be broken down and used for energy during exercise. They are Fat, Protein, and Carbohydrates.

Fat is the most energy-dense of the macronutrients, having 9 calories per gram, while both Protein and Carbohydrates only have 4 calories per gram. When doing cardiovascular exercise, your body can use all 3 of these sources of energy, depending on various factors.

Using Energy for Cardiovascular Exercise

Generally speaking, your body always finds the fastest and easiest route to find energy to power your workout. Although it may not feel like it sometimes, your body is an incredibly efficient machine and it always knows the best way to attain the energy that is needed.

Initially your body wants to go after energy that has not yet been stored, and that is still being processed. Any calories that you have taken in within an hour or two before working out will fall into this category.

Next up, your body will go after energy that is stored, but that it can get to easily, which includes both carbohydrate energy stored in your muscles in a form called Glycogen, and it also includes energy that is stored as bodyfat.

You will use carbohydrate energy as well as the stored energy from bodyfat whenever you are doing cardiovascular training, since your body can break down both forms of energy whenever you are in the aerobic training pathway.

If you exercise at a moderate intensity – approximately 70% of your maximum heart rate – you will burn through a higher percentage of bodyfat energy than carbohydrate energy. Likewise, if you exercise above the 70% threshold, you will still use both forms of energy, but a higher percentage will come from carbohydrate energy than from bodyfat.

There is an age-old debate about which of those intensities is more effective, since most people are trying to lose bodyfat, and they could care less how much carbohydrate energy is being used. However, the (equally age-old) answer to that debate is that although you will burn through more carbohydrate energy at the higher intensity levels, you will also burn significantly more total calories by keeping your intensity above 70% of your max.

What about energy from Protein?

Here is where you have the chance to take charge of your own physiology and manipulate your body’s systems in order to maximize the amount of bodyfat that is burned during your cardiovascular training session.

Earlier, the concept of “the wall” was defined as the point whenever your body runs out of carbohydrate fuel. Also, remember that your body can burn through carbohydrates as well as bodyfat during cardiovascular training. One would think then, that by continuing to exercise after the carbohydrate energy had been depleted that the body would only burn bodyfat for energy.

That is true, up to a certain point, and here is where your level of intensity becomes absolutely critical to your success.

You see, the body can only break down stored bodyfat at a certain rate while you are exercising. Think of it as your body needing to travel a great distance to get bodyfat stores that have been in place for months, years, or even decades. That energy is in deep tissue storage, and your body will only be able to get to a certain amount of it during any given training session.

If your intensity level is so high that your body cannot break down energy fast enough from bodyfat storage, and you are also out of carbohydrate energy, then the only energy source left is protein that has been broken down into amino acids and stored in your muscles.

In laymen’s terms, what that means is that if you continue to exercise once you have run out of bodyfat and carbohydrate energy, your body will start to break down muscle tissue for energy!

To say that doing so would be a bad idea would by very much of an understatement!

• For one, your muscles power your metabolism, which in turn, powers your ability to lose weight. If you sabotage your metabolism by exercising intensely without enough available energy, you will actually GAIN weight in the long run.
• For two, you will very likely feel incredibly ill. I made this mistake one time (and one time only!) and I seriously thought I might be about to die. It took me days to actually start feeling normal again.

Where’s the Middle Ground?

In order to beat your body at its own game, the trick is to not stop exercising when you run of carbohydrates, but rather to scale back on the intensity level.

For example, let’s say you are on a treadmill doing a fast walk at 4.5 mph and your heart rate is zooming right along at about 75% of your maximum. You will be screaming through calories, and getting a great cardiovascular workout at the same time. However something unexpected happens:

You start to get hungry!

In fact, you start to get SO hungry, that you are seriously considering stopping the treadmill, speeding back home, and scarfing down an entire box of Cheerios.

Don’t do it – stay right where you are!

That extreme level of hunger is your body’s natural ability to say, “Hey! I’m out of energy and I need a refill!”

Well, if you stop right there and give your body that refill, then what do you think will happen to that bodyfat storage that has been sitting on your hips or your stomach for the last 10 or more years? Yep – it’s going to stay on your hips or your stomach!

The opportunity now is to shred that bodyfat once and for all by simply scaling back the intensity of your workout to a level where your body can once again keep up with the energy demand by breaking down bodyfat to power the activity.

Coincidentally enough, for most people that will be right around 70% of their maximum heart rate, which matches up to the aforementioned “fat burning zone”. Â

Also, one thing to note is that your extreme hunger will go away once you have scaled your energy consumption back to the point where your body can keep up with the demand again. I have been running outside and been more than 3 miles from my house when I hit the carbohydrate energy barrier and suddenly got extremely hungry. However, by simply slowing down my running speed to a lower intensity level, the hunger went away in less than 5 minutes.

Conclusion

Always remember that your body is a machine, just like any other machine that you are familiar with. There are certain processes that power certain activities, and there is a very specific “if this, then that” logic that underlies everything that happens in the human body.

By learning the basics of how your body utilizes energy, not only can you maximize the health and fitness benefits of your exercise program, but you can lose the maximum amount of bodyfat at the same time!

This push up variation is an excellent way to work your tricep muscles without using any equipment whatsoever!

Be sure to visit Fitness Generator to get access to almost 2,000 exercise graphics as well as instructions on using bodyweight, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, and more!

Close Grip Push Up

To get started, simply place your hands close together underneath your chest, with the forefinger and thumb of each hand touching each other. This exercise is often called the "Diamond Push Up" since your thumbs and forefingers will form a roughly diamond shape when they are positioned properly.

Lower your body down under a controlled decent taking approximately 4 seconds to finish the lowering movement, and then push back up hard, returning to the top in 1 to 2 seconds. If the exercise is too difficult to do in the position pictured here, simply drop to your knees and do the same movement. It will still be amazingly effective.

Note: Be sure that your hands are underneath your chest, not your shoulders when you do this exercise. The closer your hands are to your shoulders, the less your triceps need to work in order to power this movement.  

Click here to see more bodyweight only exercises.