Creating a home workout plan can be a great way to stay active and improve your overall fitness and wellbeing without needing a gym membership or expensive equipment. Often the most challenging thing is knowing where to start, especially if you’re new to working out. Let’s look at how to structure a home workout plan and how to make sure that you stick to it over the long term.
The benefits of working out
Strength training, also known as resistance training, involves working against resistance, such as weights, resistance bands or your body weight, to build muscle and improve overall strength. Strength training is an important aspect of any workout plan, and there are many physical and mental benefits to incorporating it into your routine, including greater strength and power, improved bone density, increased metabolism, improved cardiovascular health, improved balance and co-ordination, increased self-esteem, and better mood. Strength training benefits can become even more important as we age.
Cardio is another important aspect of any workout plan, and it offers many benefits to your overall health, including, improving cardiovascular health, burning calories, improving mental health, improving endurance, improving sleep, increased energy levels and improved immune function.
Overall, a well-rounded home workout routine includes both cardio and strength training, as they both provide different benefits and target different aspects of your health and fitness. Here are our top tips on how to create an effective routine and maximise results.
Assess your fitness level
The first step in creating a home workout plan is to assess your current fitness level. If you are a beginner, start with light weights and low-intensity cardio exercises, and gradually increase the weight and intensity of your workouts to advance over time.
Set specific goals
It can help you achieve the best results if you set specific goals for yourself. This will help keep you motivated and on track. Whether you are looking to increase muscle mass, improve overall strength or endurance, or to increase your fitness, burn calories and lose weight. Whatever your goal, notice when you see some improvements and use that as motivation to keep going!
Create a schedule
Exercising little and often is the best way to achieve long-term results - it's better to do a shorter workout 3-5 days a week than to do a long workout once or twice a week. This will help to keep your body active and promote muscle growth and strength gains. Often people work out too hard too soon or add too much cardio to their routines, which only leads to burnout. It's also important to schedule rest days to give your muscles time to recover. It is important the schedule is manageable and realistic so you can stick to it.
Choose your exercises
When it comes to strength training, it's important to focus on exercises that target multiple muscle groups, such as squats, deadlifts, and push-ups. In addition to these exercises, you can also include isolation exercises, such as bicep curls, tricep extensions, and leg curls, to target specific muscle groups.
Add intensity to these exercises by incorporating weights and resistance. Amp’s stylish, high quality and compact weights, such as strength dumbbells in 1.5, 2 and 2kg bars, or weighted triangles in 3.5 and 4.5kg are the perfect addition, helping increase resistance to tone, sculpt and shape your muscles.
For cardio, you can include exercises such as running, cycling, or jumping rope, as well as bodyweight exercises such as jumping jacks, burpees, or mountain climbers. These exercises are great for burning calories and improving cardiovascular fitness.
When adding cardio to your exercise routine, make sure to choose activities that you actually enjoy, otherwise, you might be put off entirely. Experts recommended aiming for at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity cardio per week, or a combination of both, so try to work your way up to this.
Increase Intensity and Weight Over Time
As your body adapts to your workout routine, it's important to increase the intensity and weight of your exercises. You can achieve this by increasing the weight you lift, the number of reps, or the number of sets. But always start with a weight that is comfortable for you, otherwise, you risk injury.
Mix it Up
As you progress with your home workout plan, you might want to mix up your routine to prevent boredom and keep your body challenged. This can include trying new exercises or incorporating different types of training, such as yoga, Pilates and barre, or add in circuit training or high-intensity interval training. If you’re stuck for ideas, there are some great home workout videos you could watch online. Amp’s Pilates bundle can help get you started.
Recovery
As well as your exercise, nutrition, supplements and rest are crucial aspects of any workout and wellbeing routine. Make sure to give your muscles enough time to recover, and don't forget to stretch before and after your workout. You can also use our best-selling foam rollers and stretching bands to help relax your muscles. When used regularly after exercise, it can help increase your range of motion, flexibility and mobility while boosting circulation and lymphatic flow to relieve inflammation and soothe your muscles.
Be Consistent and Track Progress
The key to achieving the best results from your home workout plan is consistency. It's important to stick to your schedule and make exercise a regular part of your routine, but staying motivated can be extremely challenging. Keeping track of your progress is one of the best ways to stay motivated as it can help you see how far you've come. This should be a long-term lifestyle goal not a quick win.
But remember, life happens and sometimes things don't go as planned. Be flexible and adaptable, and don't get discouraged if you miss a workout or two. Just get back on track and keep going! Shop Amp Wellbeing’s range of home fitness weights and accessories here and elevate your home workouts, use code DOCTORSEAWEED for a 10% discount on your order and let us know how you get on!