exercising at home

Lately, I have been finding it a real struggle to get to the gym.  Although I have a membership at New Zealand’s best gym, Les Mills, it doesn’t make it any easier to actually use my membership.  The main problem is that spring is typically the busiest time for gardeners and we have been hosting a constant stream of wwoofers to help me get on top of things.  Although I always say that I’m going to reduce the scale of the garden each summer, that never ends up happening and I always end up being way in over my head!  Unfortunately, this also means that I don’t have time to see my trainer,  so I have had to resort to training myself, which can always be challenging.

I have already written about the benefits of having a home gym, but in this blog post I thought I would go a step further and provide some ideas for exercises that you can do outside the gym.  For those of you that travel for work or pleasure, you may find these exercises useful as you can do them on the road.  Some of these exercises use some basic gym equipment which I have invested in over the years.

Please note that I am not a qualified personal trainer but have been an avid gym goer and exercise fanatic over the past 20 years, so I merely hope to pass on some thoughts I have had about exercising remotely to others.

Upper body

• Press ups.  Start on your knees and work your way to being able to do them on your toes
• Chest press.  You’ll need a set of dumb bells for these.  If you don’t have a bench (or step box which I sometimes use), you can do this exercise lying on the floor
• Flyes.  You’ll need dumb bells for these
• Shoulder press.  You’ll need a set of dumb bells for this exercise, lighter than the ones you would use for chest press and flyes.
• Tricep dips.  You need a bench or step box for these

Lower body

• Glute bridges on the floor (I like to hold for 10 seconds)
• Wall sits.  Hold for as long as you can.  You can increase the time you hold for every time you do this exercise.  Isometric holds are very effective and you should feel burning in your quads if you’re doing the exercise properly
• Lunges.  You can do these with or without dumb bells.  To make the exercise more challenging, you can put one leg on a step box
• Walking lunges
• Monster walk using resistance bands.  I got mine from Aim’n.
• Crab, using resistance bands

Core

• Sit ups.  You can do these on the floor or on a swiss ball
• “Dead Bug”
• Prone hold
• Side hold (variation of prone hold)

Conditioning

• Mountain runners
• Everest steps (variation on mountain runners)
• Burpees. These are one of the hardest exercises to do in my opinion, with the exception of chin ups, perhaps.
• Step ups.  These are as simple as stepping on and off a step box or you can use a higher box
• Box jumps
• Skipping

​Cardio that doesn’t require a gym

• Walking outdoors
• Running
• Swimming (in a pool or ocean swimming)
• Exercise bike.  We have one of these at home.  They are relatively inexpensive and are a great alternative for cardio when it’s raining and you can’t exercise outdoors
• Exercise videos.  Les Mills on Demand is excellent and most programmes can be done at home and don’t require equipment
• Boot camp