Basic Home Workout for Starter

Starting is always hardest, no matter what you do.

Before coming up with this basic home workout for starter, I had a great feeling of doing something like this because I found many people, including myself, had a tough time trying to begin with exercising or workout at home due to many personal reasons and therefore, many had failed to start with it. There are many reasons behind failing to begin with some workout. The common reasons I found are below:

• Not sure what type of workout is suitable for own self and environment
• Not sure when to perform those workout
• Sweating out is inconvenient if there is activity later (Example: Work, Going out)
• Taking bath after workout is troublesome
• There is a need to clean the floor or exercise mat after you sweats out
• You had taken your bath so you don't want to take another one
• Too busy, so leave it for next time
• Feeling tired today, so leave it for next time
• Don't have time or idea to plan what type of workout I should do
• It's bored to do it alone
• I don't think it will be effective
• I prefer to do something else now
• My room/place don't have enough space
• I'm actually thin and healthy
• I'm fat so my body is heavy to perform any workout
• I'm feeling not quite well
• I need more sleep instead

Summarizing all the common reasons above, the main obstacles for not starting or performing any workout is because of laziness, lack of self control, and unable to see the benefits behind exercise or workout. This is why, before you thinking what type of workout you should do, where and how you should it, you need to ensure that you overcome the three main obstacles. All you need is "just do it" and don't tell yourself "but..." or "however...".

Anyhow, if you still wondering what type of workout you should do when you are at home, here are some simple workout that doesn't required any tools and consume very little space.

Basic Home Workout for Starter
Duration	Approx. 6~8 minutes
Involved Body Parts	Bicep, Triceps, Shoulder, Chest, Abs, Quadriceps, Hamstring, Calves. Click here for the basic muscle naming
Tool Required.	Exercise Mat (Optional)
Exercise Type: Plank Squat Push Up Mountain Climber

And below is the description for each workout.

1. Plank. At least 30 seconds, 2 sets.

Refer to this video: How to Plank

Involved Body Parts: Bicep, Triceps, Shoulder, Chest, Quadriceps

2. Squat. At least 20 reps, 2 sets.

Refer to this video: How to do a Squat: Boot Camp Workout

Involved Body Parts: Quadriceps, Hamstring, Calves

3. Push Up. At least 15 reps, 1 or 2 sets.

Refer to this video: How to do a Push Up Correctly

Involved Body Parts: Bicep, Shoulder, Chest, Quadriceps

4. Mountain Climber. At least 20 reps, 2 Sets.

Refer to this video: How to Do a Mountain Climber: Boot Camp Workout

Involved Body Parts: Triceps, Abs, Quadriceps

At the end of the workout above, you should have sweats a little and feeling your body in heat. That's indicate that you are burning your body calories and it's a good sign. Although it's differ depending on each individual, it's best if you don't feel much after completing the workout above because it means your body is ready to go for higher level workout. Either way, these workout is sufficient for you to maintain your body at a well trained condition and ensure your body has a good capability in ensuring healthier body system and allow you to go for harder workout as you practice it more often.

Read more...

Review on Plyometric Agility Exercise from Fitness Blender

So, as I was searching for a set of routine workout that focus on improving my stamina, leg strength and at the same time, help on building strength on my arm, I found this workout known as "Plyometric Agility Exercise" from Fitness Blender, here is the link.

From what I had read about Plyometric training, this is more suitable if you wanted to improve on jumping, agility, and speed. Although this is not exactly what I'm looking for, but worth giving it a try since my main focus is on the leg and stamina anyway.

Following the "Plyometric Agility Exercise" link as above, this workout is a set of routine that you need to keep on going and for my suggestion, you can take maximum 10 to 15 seconds between each exercise but try to keep it as short as possible because you want to improve your endurance and body capability to cope with joint improvement and stamina improvement. That's said, as recommended from WebMD which is the second link on above, if you have joint or bone problem, this workout is not suitable for you.

For this set of workout, you need to keep going for 16 reps on each exercise, maximum 10 to 15 seconds rest between each exercise as I said, and while doing it try to put some "explosive" energy into it which means try to move faster and with more strength. In this way you can improve much faster. After you done all 8 exercise below, you have repeat for another sets for all 8 of them and that's it. The site suggested that you should take approximately 14 minutes to complete 2 sets of all 8 exercises.

Below is the 8 exercises as suggested in the site above. You can check out the video that demonstrate how you should do it and also the benefits of each exercise on the bottom of the video.

8 Exercise, 16 reps for each, 2 sets

16 Single Leg Lateral Hops for left and right leg

16 Squat Jumps

16 Single Leg Ventral Hops for left and right leg

16 Burpees

16 Lateral Jumps

16 Jumping Lunges

16 Agility Dots for leg and right leg, and for four different directions

16 Mountain Climbers

Doing each of the exercises above separately is fine for me except for the Agility Dots, which required you to jump on four different direction for 16 times on one leg, so in the end you have to jump 4 sets of 16 times at one leg, which make a total 64 jump on one leg, and 128 jump on both leg. That's seems overkill for me even if I'm going to do only this one. So I'm not going to include Agility Dots into my attempt, probably not in the near future too.

For my first attempt on the above workout, it was quite breath taking and tiring after the first set, that's make me feel like stopping to take some rest but I can feel that I still have breath and energy to go on. So I try to complete the second sets and after that, my quadriceps and hamstrings part for both of my leg was ache for three days. And I was feeling slightly dizzy after finishing two sets that time. Guess it's probably causes by the jumping and I wasn't good at knowing when to breath in and out.

This time is my seconds attempt after my leg muscle is recovered from the ache yesterday, which means I'm feeling totally fine yesterday without any ache or pain. And below is my comment after each exercise.

Set 1

Type of Exercise	Comment after end of exercise
16 Single Leg Lateral Hops	Not feeling much. Leg is fine and breath fine. No sweats.
16 Squat Jumps	Breath slightly heavier. Body started to feel a little warm.
16 Single Leg Ventral Hops	Leg feeling a little tired, probably caused by a continuous hop after the squat jumps. Started to feel like I'm going to sweat.
16 Burpees	Breath much more heavier. Arms feel slightly tired while both of my leg felt much restrained. Feel like I need to stop going on. Sweat alot.
16 Lateral Jumps	Breath slightly heavy, but not too much. Don't really feel much pressure on the leg.
16 Jumping Lunges	Feel a little weak on the leg, but overall is fine. Breath get slightly heavier.
16 Mountain Climbers	Breath gets quite heavy. Leg feeling more weak and my upper body is totally wet. Feeling tired, wish to stop and rest.

I rest a little and gasp as much fresh air as I could for about one minute. My breath was really heavy and my heart get pumped a lot. Feeling quite tired that my lazy mind telling me to stop but of course, I did not stop and go on with the second sets.

Set 2

Type of Exercise	Comment after end of exercise
16 Single Leg Lateral Hops	Still breathing heavily. Not as easy as the first set. Finish performing hopping for both leg make me exhale harder.
16 Squat Jumps	Leg feeling much weaker. Breath really heavy and started to feel dizzy after all the jumping. Body is completely covered with sweats.
16 Single Leg Ventral Hops	Forcing my leg to hop and completing this. Still breathing heavily. Leg is kinda worn out. Stop for more than 30 seconds because I know the next one is really hard.
16 Burpees	Couldn't feel my leg. During the 12th reps, I couldn't pump any more energy into my leg to jump. My shoulder feel quite sore as well. Can't stop myself from sitting down to rest my leg for about a minute.
16 Lateral Jumps	Still breathing heavily. Leg felt more restrained but still able to jump properly from side to side.
16 Jumping Lunges	Can feel that both of my leg getting really weak as I can't stand properly and my leg is slightly shaking for each lunge. Feel more dizzy as I breath in more air.
16 Mountain Climbers	Each time I rise my leg, I can feel I breath much heavier but I can't wait to quickly finish it. My hand was fine when holding onto the exercise mat, leg feeling weak but I still can control to finish this one.

As I finally completed the both sets, I have to sit down at the exercise mat for about 5 minutes to exhale and rest my leg. I wish to get some water but I can't really feel my leg at first. At least I feel alright after a complete rest to cool down my leg instead of moving around like the first time. Perhaps I was suppose to sit down and rest for at least 5 minutes every time I done this routine.

At least I don't really feel sore and pain the next day, which indicate I can still go on with the routine again. Although I still feel a little weak, but I guess it's a good opportunity for me to keep on training this way to build more strength as I keep on with such method.

Will post more about this workout if I felt any improvement or learn something new about this.

Lastly, thanks Fitness Blender for providing this wonderful guide.

Read more...