If your living room workouts are starting to feel a little stale, we’ve got you covered: The best home exercise programs can spice up your exercise routine a bit and maybe even introduce you to new ways to exercise.
Working out at home is pretty much the way of life today, with most gyms across the country still closed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. For those who used to take fitness classes at gyms or studios, working out at home was a bit of a change. One main reason? When you work out in a fitness class, you don’t have to worry about your next half hour or hour: your body simply moves to follow your trainer’s instructions. It can free you from a lot of pressure and help you focus only on your training.
But when you train at home, you are responsible for the whole plan: what exercises should you do? How many repetitions of each? How often should you rest? Fancy a cardio workout? An upper body workout? Or do you prefer to do a full body workout? For many of us, answering all these questions is an additional stress that we prefer to avoid for now.
And the good news is that you can avoid it while still exercising. There are a number of home exercise programs that will take your guesswork out. They give you the whole training schedule and all you have to do is show up and get ready to break a sweat.
In fact, there are so many home exercise programs out there that it can be overwhelming to decide which one is right for you. While you may have heard your friends or co-workers rave about their favorite show like Tone It Up or Insanity, deciding which home exercise program is best for you is a personal decision based on your lifestyle and your personal needs.
Many factors differ from one program to another: its cost, the type of training included, the duration of each training, if you need material, etc. (If you’re short on exercise equipment, which can be really hard to find online right now, you can follow these tips to make every move harder without adding more weight.)
One thing we want to note: Some of these workouts hype results and use language we don’t like, and some even come with meal plans (best left to a dietitian) or encourage food logging. It’s important to remember that a lot of this is just unfortunate marketing and what you get from a workout is very unique to you and your body and other factors like your health, sleep patterns, genetics, diet, and more. The best workout for you depends on your own body, goals, and interests. Keeping a food diary can be helpful for some people, but it’s not for everyone, and you certainly don’t need to follow a specific diet to follow your exercise program. If you don’t follow a nutrition plan or want to track your diet, skip this part and focus solely on your fitness.
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20 minute total arm workout
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It’s also important to listen to your body, especially when it comes to high-intensity exercise programs. Rest when you need to, don’t push yourself through the pain, and choose a program that’s right for your fitness level. (If you’re new to fitness, for example, you probably won’t feel very excited or comfortable jumping right into the P90X.)
To help you choose the best home workout schedule, we’ve reviewed some of the most popular plans to firstly make sure workouts are scheduled legitimately and reasonably, and secondly break down what you can expect from each. This is the offer of 13 of the most popular home training programs.