No Equipment? No Excuses: 20 Exercises You Can Do At Home
- No gym,
- No weights,
- No equipment.
Can a decent workout be done? Yes
Is it ideal? No
There is always a time when you can’t get to the gym, or don’t have the hour or two to get there do the workout and get home. If you haven’t set your own home gym up, there is still a lot you can do. You won’t get you the gains that you will get from going to the gym, lifting weights and completing your full program, but they certainly aren’t easy, and will at least help you maintain your work, and take no time at all…which means no excuses.
Lower Body
BW Squats
Do them with or without the box. The box just makes it a bit easier to get your glutes involved. This is a great warmup exercise.
OH Squats
I don’t need to speak more about the benefits of this exercise. Use a broom stick at home. Read more about Overhead Squats here.
SL Squats
These are tough. You can have your foot supported or not. Supported you can probably get mroe out, unsupported is a great balance exercise. To support your leg put it behind you on a chair.
SL Stiff Leg Deadlifts
These will really get your hamstrings going, you don’t even need to hold anything as it is tough eccentric work and you will feel it anyway, but a ball or something that size is fine.
OH Lunges
Holding something overhead really stretched out your fascia and gives you an extra hip flexor stretch. Doesn’t matter what it is. Sorry about the lighting on this one.
Side Lunges
These are pretty tough, a great alternative to lunges.
Calf Raises
If you have a step to do this on it is better. Try using one leg.
Step Ups
Any chair will do. If it is too easy find something heavy to hold to your chest or overhead.
Bridges
These are hard, and will really get stuck into your butt.
Bit of a different one thrown in here, this is great for your butt. Might be harder for people to find an appropriate surface.
I haven’t included any explosive/ jumping movements in this list, there are too many and that can be for another post. This is just purely strength work. Upper Body
Pushups and Alternatives
There are so many alternatives to pushups that you can do at home. Check out this post on Pushups.
- Normal Pushups
- Pushups with weight/ backpack on
- Single arm Pushups
- Single arm wall pushups
- Clap Pushups (explosive)
- Incline Pushups (easier)
- Decline Pushups (Harder, with feet up on something)
Lying Pullups
Admittedly these look a little strange, but they work, and if you are going to do pushups, you should do a set of these. If you have something you can lie under, like a fence and pull up, it is easier than using someone else.
Dips
The old classic.
Needless to say if you are imaginative, you can get heavy things and do shoulder press and pull exercises. I haven’t included them because I don’t know what everyone has in their house.
Abdominals, Activation, Core and Random Exercises
There is a massive amount of different ab exercises out there, all of which pretty much do the same thing. So I haven’t put many in, you all know what a sit up is, just some different ones you might like, I tend to stick with prone holds, they don’t aggravate my back at all.
Prone Hold and Variations
I have talked about these before, check out this post on Prone Holds.
Supermans
These are great for stability.
Glute Lifts
Great for activating and strengthening your bum.
Arabesque
This one is great for activating your bum and is a really good balance exercise. Try to hold for 30 seconds. You’ll feel your quad too.
Dead Bugs
A great abdominal and core stability workout.
Inchworm
I like this one. It’s almost a flexibility one but I can throw it in there because it is working stabilizers and upper body a little. Hence it comes under the random tag. Gets the hamstrings loose!
Inchworm from Lauren B on Vimeo.
Bird Dog
Another one for activating your bum. Alternate sides and hold for a second.
There is obviously a massive range of exercises that can be done at home, especially core and ab ones, many of which I have deliberately left out. I hope this list opens your eyes to how easily you can get a full body workout without even a theraband or a swiss ball. If you have any more leave them in the comments section. Just remember you can always exercise at home without equipment.
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26 Responses to “No Equipment? No Excuses: 20 Exercises You Can Do At Home”
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Tight Hips?
Long term pain from shortened hip muscles can mean permanent hip, knee and lowback damage. Target the muscles involved with specific Stretch Away Pain exercises to reduce and eliminate hip pain. Muscle pain is due to muscle shortening.
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wow! very nice post lauren. will come in handy when im working at the hospital and staying in doctors accommodation.
These look really fun, thanks a bunch.
They are going to be helpful during study breaks for me, help with the stress relief.
GREAT post! I”m all about gym-free fitness and always looking for more ways to do resistance training without equipment. These are great. Thank yoU!
I was wondering if I could get your opinion on this guy’s criticism of using resistance bands for training: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=LysSUBMqKnc
What do you think? Is it safe to use resistance bands to work out at home?
Thanks for this series of exercises. I’m a big fan of your blog.
G’day Jay
I wouldn’t take much notice of it from your point of view. I think he is basically saying that JUST doing tubing won’t develop the eccentric part of that movement, which is basically your upper back muscles stopping the arm, or decelerating it. If a boxer just did this exercise he would only develop the concentric phase, which is the pecs and shoulders pushing forward. Which is all that exercise would do using any apparatus. It won’t train the back to decelerate the arm. Basically he’s not making a whole lot of sense…even though partially he is right.
Resistance bands are very safe and good for you to use at home or at work. I wouldn’t only use them as you want to be lifting a bit heavier sometimes and you want to have a different stimulus.
Hope that explains it.
Inch worm is tough, animal movements are great for a warm up. We do them a lot at speed camp. Seriously though if you can’t get into a gym, just find a local play ground and you can do an awesome workout on the monkey bars. Be creative.
Very true Young Athletes. There are many thins oyu can do by yourself if you are stuck with no gym.
Great article Lauren. Im a big fan of bodyweight workouts. I also really like to do handstand pushups. They’ve helped me through some plateaus with my presses.
-Justin
Wow!
Great post, will surely come in handy when on vacation during the summer!
Thanks.
how does the box in the BW squat work on the glutes?
Also, spotted your Wii fit in one of the pics, what do you think of it? useful, or useless? (I’m thinking of getting one as a compliment to what i’m doing at the moment)
Great article BTW! I’m about to start using a local gym, but having more things to do at home will definitely help out.
Cheers
hey Alistair,
Box squats makes sure you lead with your butt when you squat, which really makes them kick in.
Yeah I like the wii fit, it has some really cool balance stuff on it I use a lot
Hey, I know this is the wrong section to do this but I sent you an e-mail asking you what you think about Zig-Zagging/Calorie shifting, and I just figured it’d be easier if you could respond on here I guess.
http://eatknowhow.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/calorie-shifting-fad-and-facts/
check out that site, it has some rounded information. I can’t say I really know a lot about this diet, and don’t really want to comment, but it just seems another way to mess around with your metabolism, not a long term solution. Oh and sorry I hadn’t responded to your email, I simply did not have time yesterday.
fantastic post!!
Miz.
Nice article I loved it.
Hey I found a discounted magazine rate for women’s health that I thought you might be interested in:
http://www.magazinesusa.com/womens-health-magazine.cfm
Great workout!
I am for at home workouts…no excuses!
Best,
Coop
Thanks! Will be using these and doing some power walking to get in shape for summer in South Africa!
Lauren this article is tops! do you mind if I put a direct link to it from my site? I think there is significant information in here that shows that you can workout anywhere, anytime! Love the vids too - you rock! (good luck in the pre-season as well!)
Jamie Atlas
hey jamie, of course you can put a link. thanks…pre season is tough. absolutely no time and still can’t feel my legs. Off to prague on wednesday, hopefully things can settle down soon.
That’s a very good article! Body weight exercises are always good. Hope you can post more soon.
[…] number of sets performed per session is based on the number of exercises you have per session. So, for arguments sake, lets assume that your session lasts 30 minutes and you […]
Fantastic advice. Anytime I can workout without having to go to the gym, I am completely for!
OMG u have a great butt, i want a butt like yours. Come and check out my blog. im gonna try a lot of these excercises. your blog rocks!
So great to see another personal trainer’s blog that is actually full of useful information and not just advertising!
Thank You So Much for your website.. the only problem I am having is I had a car wreck back in May of last year… so I cant support myself on one foot at all. So the things such as lunges I am incapable of doing. I would do them if I could bend that way. lol. But I cant bend my right leg at all if it is not being supported at the exact same time as my left. It just doesnt bend. Yes I am allowed to work out my doc says and am going to physical therapy.. but my body has really gotten out of shape since the accident.
Do you think it would be possible to e-mail me and let me know of the things that would be best for my circumstances…. and also… I need to work out my back..? Any exercises for the back? How many times should I do each one also?
Thank You sooooo much for all your help!!
I wish you had 50 exercises to do at home.
Thank you!!!!!
Good Article. I hate drivi g to the gym and only have free weights at home and a treadmill! Boo! Thanks. Mainly its nice because I forget some of these while im working out.