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.

Reverse Hypers

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 LaurensFitness on Vimeo.

Bird Dog

Another one for activating your bum. Alternate sides and hold for a second. Also a great exercise to treat back spasms.

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.

If you have any favourite home exercises without equipment that you do, leave a comment!

Popularity: 47% [?]