Who Works Out at Home Without Equipment?
A workout with no equipment is the most flexible way to grab a great workout at home, on the road, or even during a nice day at the park. For those of you that have a background in fitness, you probably know that bodyweight workouts can be some of the most challenging workouts out there. This post details a comprehensive list of workouts that can be done without the luxury of equipment.
How to Build a Home Workout Routine
The best way to ensure you incorporate fitness in your life is to build a daily home workout routine. We recommend stepping aside the same time every day to get your workout in. The most popular times are as soon as you wake up in the morning and after a long day at work. However, if you are in fact working from home, then a lunchtime workout is a great way to break up your day with some cardio and strength training!
Workout Structure for Home Workouts
Each workout should include a warmup, workout, and post-workout stretch.
Warmup
Warming up gets your mind and body prepped for the strenuous workout activity. Do the following exercises for 30 seconds each, cycling through the list twice:
• Jumping Jacks
• Wide Squats
• Plank Walk-Outs
Workout
For a solid home workout without equipment, you should plan for 10-20 minutes of strenuous work. Each week plan to do a strength training workout 4 times a week to match these four types of workouts. For the moves described in the next section of this post, plan to do each one for 45-60 seconds. Take a 15-second break between each exercise and a 1-minute rest at the end of the set of moves. The full circuit should be done 3 times in order to get the muscle fatigue required for strength building.
• Upper Body Workout
• Lower Body Workout
• Core Workout
• Full Body Workout
Stretch
Stretching helps aid in your muscle recovery and reduces soreness. Try holding the following positions for 30 seconds each:
• Child’s Pose
• Downward Dog
• Shoulder Circles (forward & backward)
• Cobra
• Forward Fold
Overview of Types of Home Workouts (No Equipment)
As mentioned earlier, these 4 types of workouts should each be completed once a week to build full-body strength.
Upper Body Workouts
• Push-ups – These are one of our favorite home workouts because you can do them virtually anywhere. As discussed in our dedicated post on upper body home workouts, there are 3 preferred types of pushups. The diamond chest press, decline chest press, and chest press with clapping will definitely get the job done for you!
• Pull-ups – these are excellent for our upper body, especially your upper back area. However, getting them done is more challenging if you are staying true to the no-equipment choice. Instead of buying yourself VIRB’s favorite door-mounted pull-up bar, you can always try for a playground or exposed beam in your garage or basement. We recommend a pull-up bar though 😊
• Dips – An excellent workout for your triceps and shoulders, dips are the last workout to add to your upper body workout with no equipment. These are fairly straightforward to do from a low chair or with a pair of stools. Check out this video for more examples:
Lower Body Workouts
• Squats – Another great workout that you can do anywhere. We recommend alternating between two types of bodyweight squats. First are traditional squats with your feet shoulder-width apart. The second is wide-leg squats to add a little bit of extra strength and mobility to your hips. Here is a good overview of the type of form you should have when doing traditional squats.
• Lunges – A comprehensive lower body exercise, lunges work the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. The first technique is to do these in place, focusing on 1 leg at a time. To add difficulty, try jumping in the air in between repetitions. The second is to essentially walk forward while doing lunges, alternatively each leg.
• Box Jumps – Assuming you do not have a box jump set at home, these are great to do on patios, decks, and even stairs inside the house. This is a great exercise to building both strength and agility that will help you perform better on the court.
Core Workouts
Most of the upper body and lower body workouts discussed above will work your core as a byproduct of using your body weight as the resistance. However, these workouts are designed specifically for working out the core.
• Planks – Planks will build strength over time as you hold your core in a stabilized position. Depending on your strength, support your upper body from your hands or your elbows. To make it a little more difficult, try raising and lowering one leg at a time without twisting your core. Check out this video for helpful tips on how to mix it up with both forward planks and reverse planks.
• Crunches & Sit-ups – Both crunches and sit-ups will add targeted strength to your abdomen muscles. For anyone sitting at a desk all day for work, ab strength really helps mitigate the long-term effects of sitting all day.
Full Body Workouts
Try to plan a full-body workout once a week, instead of focusing on a specific muscle group. We recommend doing at least one of the workouts from each upper body, lower body, and core section above. Because you rotate the muscle fatigue in different parts of your body, plan to reduce the average rest time between sets.
Bottom Line
Bodyweight strength is a really important workout skill because it means you are not limited by a gym to get a good workout just about anywhere. The workouts discussed above are great because they can be done at home, in a hotel, or even outside at the park. Don’t forget the importance of warming up before the circuit and stretching afterward!
