How to start exercising at home?

Welcome to another #Beshaped post! On our blog, you'll find advice on nutrition, exercise, suggestions on choosing the right clothes, and a handful of tips on typical female issues.

This post is dedicated entirely to home exercise! You will find motivation, suggestions and answers to questions such as:
How to start exercising at home?
How to exercise effectively at home?
What accessories are useful for training at home?

But before we get to the most important issues, a bit of motivation and self-justification :) You can find a whole bunch of guides online about consistency, setting goals, plans, defining exercises for individual muscle groups, using heart rate monitors, diet control and sooooo much more... Of course, all of the issues mentioned are very important and at later stages it is worth slowly implementing subsequent solutions, but at the beginning the most important thing is to start exercising at all and stick with it until you become addicted to even the minimal effort and it becomes a part of your everyday life.

So, how do you start? Where do you start? How do you exercise at home? What exercise accessories are recommended for beginners? Do I need professional accessories, or can I replace them with something at home? What exercise equipment can be useful at home? Let's start from the beginning!

Home training - how to start?

Everyone probably knows that physical activity is necessary in our lives, but with systematic exercise and introducing activity into our everyday life it is worse. Why? First of all, because most often we approach this topic as binary, now or never, all or nothing. Instead of starting with short, twenty-minute workouts, a basic warm-up and a set of simple exercises, we start with extensive training programs, which very often include demanding cardio programs aimed at maintaining a high heart rate and accelerating metabolism.
The starting point for introducing physical activity into your daily life (if you don’t exercise at all) is to adopt the following overarching assumption:
Better less but systematically than rarely but intensively.

How to start exercising at home?

1. Start by wearing comfortable clothes that you feel good in.

2. Next, prepare a set of exercises that you will do as part of your first workouts. At this point, the first goal is to find exercises that you will find relatively enjoyable, that will not be too tiring, and that you will be happy to do. The question of which exercises will appeal to you is very individual - we recommend that you use free exercise apps that you can download to your phone or choose exercises from those that we have included as suggestions below.

3. Prepare a series or music that will fill the time during exercise - this is very important, firstly, so that you do not have to choose between exercise and learning, watching a series or listening to a training, your favorite podcast, etc. Combining exercise with such an additional activity is especially important if you have limited time or if at the beginning the exercises are too tiring for you and you are not able to focus.

To sum up the above information - how to start exercising at home? First, you need to prepare everything you will simply need to check off this activity so that you do not waste time each time gathering strength, desire, idea, plan and motivation. With such a prepared background, you will never again ask yourself how to exercise at home.

Home Exercises - What Will You Need?

Before we move on to a set of sample exercises, let's establish one thing - you don't need much to do workouts at home, and certainly all the things that might come in handy for you involve a one-time investment.
Strength training at home, what can be useful for you?
- Resistance bands
- Dumbbells
- Mat
and that's really the entire base that's enough for you to do a basic workout.

How to exercise at home if you don't want to spend any money?
Replace the above-mentioned accessories with water bottles (1.5 L) and a towel or mat.

With these devices you can successfully perform strength training, stretching, and aerobic training at home.

How to exercise effectively at home?



We have already discussed exercise accessories - if you want you can equip yourself with them, but remember the small steps method. Exercise accessories are not necessary to start and do strength training at home or aerobic training at home.

Strength training at home - preparation for exercise:
This type of training is generally static, but many exercises require minimal space. For safety, check that you have enough space, place an exercise mat on the floor, lie down on it, stretch out your arms, move your bent legs to the left, then to the right. Are you not catching anything? Is there anything that is getting in your way during the exercises?
If not, we can start!

Strength training at home - exercise suggestions:
If you have exercise accessories prepared, such as resistance bands or dumbbells, you can additionally use them during training; we have prepared a list of exercises that you can perform with your own weight, without accessories.

Warm-up duration 10-15 minutes:

• arm circles backwards and forwards - 30 seconds on each side,
• hip circles - 30 seconds,
• alternating lunges on the right and left leg - 30 seconds each,
• jumping jacks - 60 seconds,

Repeat the set three times, you can add running in place with heel-to-butt strikes. After warming up, you can do some basic stretching exercises that increase mobility - this will allow for faster recovery.

Proper home strength training for beginners (for women) duration 30-40 minutes:

• Wall Push-Ups - Stand on your toes at an arm's length from the wall, do push-ups standing up, always standing on your toes. Bend your arms, keeping your elbows close to your body. 20 reps per set.
• Plank on knees - go to a lying position, knees and elbows are bent. In one series, hold for 30 seconds in a support on elbows. The head should be an extension of the spine.
• Lunges on the left and right legs - 20 repetitions on each side in one series. While doing lunges, make sure that the knee does not exceed the height of the foot. In bends, make sure the angle is right. While doing lunges, you can take dumbbells or bottles of water in your hands.
• Knee to elbow in a supported kneeling position - move to a supported kneeling position. Alternately meet the opposite elbow with the knee. 20 reps in a series.
• Hip raises lying on mat - if you have dumbbells or weights, you can place them on your pelvis while doing this exercise. 20 reps per set.
• Lying mountain bike - 30 seconds in a row.
• Dumbbell squats - 20 reps per set. During the squats, make sure that your knees are pointing outwards.
• Front raises on the mat - lie on the mat on your stomach, raise your torso up - 15 repetitions in a series.

This is a sample set of 8 exercises for people who are just starting out, for individual muscle groups. This set should be repeated 3 times (3 sets) for 15-20 repetitions in a set. Take a maximum of one minute break between sets. Strength training should be finished with simple stretching exercises.

What home exercise equipment can you use? A chair, stool and couch are all great pieces of furniture that, when combined with your own body weight, will help you perform many exercises effectively!

Accessories useful for training at home - checklist

1. Dumbbells or water bottles x2 1.5 L
2. Resistance bands
3. Exercise mat
4. Heart rate monitor belt or sports watch

Is everything there? Let's get started!