Can At Home Workouts Be Effective?

OK, you’re working from home, everyone says you need to exercise to stay healthy, you’re ready to commit to this but you have just one question?

Can at home workouts be as effective as going to the gym? Well, yes, and no.

To make an at home workout properly effective – you need to take advantage of the pros and avoid the cons.

The Pros Of Home Workouts

There are some fairly obvious benefits of working out from home (and it’s why we recommend that you workout in our wellness tips for remote workers).

It’s super convenient. It doesn’t get any easier when it comes to getting ready to exercise than rolling out of bed, taking a shower, and putting some clothes on. You’ve no traffic to deal with, no parking space to find, no competition for a particular machine, etc.
It’s very flexible. OK, most of us don’t have the money to put a fully stocked gym in our homes but there are loads of exercises that you can do without any equipment at all (see our list of exercises for home workers for some examples). You can also get ideas on YouTube, through the app store, and more.
It’s cheap. Assuming you opt for a routine that involves no equipment, your costs are pretty much nothing (we’ll assume you’d own clothes no matter what, here).
It will help prevent stress. It’s also one of the things you can do to prevent burnout, exercise is genuinely essential to healthy living.

The Cons Of Home Workouts

But let’s not pretend that it’s all good when working out at home, there are some downsides too:

The temptation to skip a day can be huge. It’s really easy to tell yourself that tomorrow is as good as today, and, of course, tomorrow never comes. You need to be properly self-disciplined to stick to a home workout routine. It can’t work, unless you do it.
You may be space constrained. You may want a rowing machine, an exercise bike and a mini gym but if you only have a couple of square feet left in your apartment? You’re going to have to do something else if you want to do it at home. Or you could move.
You might injure yourself. You need to be careful when exercising under your own supervision, if you make a mistake, you could hurt yourself. It’s a good idea to get a little training before you workout from home.

An Example Of What’s Needed For An Effective Home Workout

The ideal workout lasts for around 30 minutes a day but if you don’t have a half hour to give up – break it down into 3 x 10 minute sessions, research says that’s almost as good as doing it in one go.

Then:

Clear enough space to work out safely. Make sure you’re not going to bang into anything or fall on anything when you’re working out. Safety first.
Pre-plan each workout. We like to use an Excel sheet to plan our workouts but there are apps that are designed for this too. Just have a plan. Then you can hold yourself accountable for sticking to it.
Always make sure that you warm up and warm down. That means properly shaking yourself out and allowing your muscles to return to normal. Don’t just throw yourself into high intensity workouts and then suddenly stop – you will get injured.
Do strength training and cardio. If you want a workout that makes you feel good and helps you to live longer, you want to do some resistance training and some aerobic workouts.
Use your body as your main workout tool. Your body weight is a really useful thing for building muscle. Do sit ups, pushups, planks, lunges, climb stairs, etc. and you’ll soon see improvements. Many of these activities are also low risk and don’t require any tuition before you do them.
Keep on doing it. Make sure to exercise daily (or at least 3 times a week) and to keep pushing your limits (slowly, don’t rush this). You’ll feel better and better and better as you go.