Working out at home is not hard. All you need is your bodyweight. If you did own some free weights, a pull up bar, dip station and the basics of a home gym, it would be great, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world if you do not own any equipment. Click here to get some home gym ideas.
End of the day, your body-weight is your ultimate fitness equipment. If you cannot master your body weight, the equipment can wait until you do so.
When it comes to working at home, you have to choose your fitness goal – build muscle, burn fat or burn fat and build muscle at the same time.
Workout Structure
If you are overly obese, your primary goal should be to burn fat as hard as you can until you come to a point where you can proudly say, “It’s time for me to PUT ON”.
Until so, this article is going to focus on a few key factors that you can use to create your own workout based on your goals.
The best way to get results is by focusing on compound full body movements that focus on your lower body and upper body. Those are the only 2 bodies available in one body, haha!
The workout structure
Lower Body
Push
Pull
These 3 movements are all you need to get results, be it to build muscle or burn fat or both.
If you wish to add more to your workout, you can structure in this form:
Jump variation
Lower body
Push
Pull
Lower body
Push
Pull
Did you see how easy it can be to make your workout easier or harder? A beginner should start with 3 movements, while an intermediate or expert can go harder on the number of exercises in a workout.
Sample exercises
Lower body
Single leg squats
Single leg deadlift
Single leg Romanian dead lift
Lunge jumps
Wall squat hold
Squats
Prisoner Squats
Y Squats
1.5 Squats
Push
Pushups
T Pushups
Decline Pushups
Hindu Pushups
Dips
Should press pushups
Hand stand pushups
Pull
Chin Up variations
Pull Up Variations
Inverted Rows
Stick Ups
Ys and T’s
Try to get a pull up bar at minimal with best reviews at https://www.suspensionrev.com/chin-up-bar-choices/
Reps & Rest Periods
In order to build muscle, you need to focus on 8-12 reps, with 1 to 2 minutes rest between sets. The longer rest is to make sure every rep you perform is of quality and uses maximal strength. In doing so, you are straining your muscles at its maximum limit. This tears them down to grow bigger and better.
You could also perform these exercises for time - 30 to 45 seconds. This is the strength and hypertrophy range. If your exercises can be performed with ease for more than 12 reps or 45 seconds, you can make them harder by increasing the resistance.
Hold at the peak position for 2 to 3 seconds.
Increase your eccentric portion of the workout by controlling the movement for 3 to 5 seconds.
These can make your exercises harder.
You could do the same if your goal is to burn fat too, although most trainers recommend a shorter rest period of 30 to 60 seconds between sets for a bigger metabolic effect.
I do not believe in short rests but both strategies have their benefits, so it’s your choice. If you are constrained for time, the short rests would be the way to go.
I personally prefer to perform 6 to 12 minutes of hard cardio with bodyweight calisthenic movements such as jumps, mountain climbers, running in place to get my fat burning results.
Control your Diet
Eventually, the workouts don’t matter if you cannot focus on a good diet plan. Diet controls 80% of the results. It doesn’t matter what your workout goal is, if your diet is not in place, you are not going to get results.
Now that you have things covered, it’s time to stop informing overload and start getting your butt off to a good fitness routine.