I abandoned the gym
some time ago in favour of exercising at home, and I enjoy it so much and have
become so used to it that when I did find myself back in a gym one day, I
looked around at all the equipment and thought “What does anyone need all this stuff
for?” and ended up barely using any of it.
The advantages of working
out at home are many and various: it costs nothing, travel time is zero, which
not only saves you time but also means that you can do a shorter session
without feeling you’ve wasted a trip, or you can do more than one workout in a
day without the hassle of going out every time, you don’t get people who think
they know everything coming and giving you unsolicited advice (or telling you
that women “should” do push-ups on their knees), you can shower at home
afterwards, you can work to your level without worrying anyone is judging you,
you don’t have to queue for equipment or space, and – most glorious of all –
you can look like a sight for sore eyes in your mismatched, overly revealing
clothes, with your hair scraped back and sweat pouring down your bright red
face, and as long as you keep the curtains closed, nobody will even know!
It’s too
wonderful not to share.
Here are my
favourite home workouts available on the internet. Most of them require no equipment.
Run by Kelli and
Daniel, a cheerful, very down-to-earth and completely unpretentious couple.
They never seem to be trying to make an impression – they just chat to the
camera as if you were their friend and you were there working out with them.
This is the most
user-friendly website I’ve seen, allowing you to search for workouts by difficulty
level, time, body focus (upper, lower, total body), calories burnt, type of
exercise and equipment. There are different types of workouts, so there’s something for everyone: yoga, HIIT,
kickboxing, strength, etc., and new workouts are constantly added.
There are five levels
of difficulty, from warm-ups, cool-downs and gentle stretching to the kind of workouts that will leave you in a trembling heap at the end.
In many of the
workouts, each exercise is done in short bursts of no more than a minute before you either rest or move to a different exercise. The frequent changing
from one exercise to another keeps you distracted from the clock, and before you know it, you're done.
The kickboxing
workouts are my favourite when time is limited. The first time I tried one, I
was astonished at how such simple moves could be so tiring – and at how sore I
was the next day. A lot of other trainers do kickboxing moves in their
workouts, but Daniel’s ones get you in a way that other trainers’
don’t.
A two-month workout
programme run by Nicky Holender, a former professional English footballer who
has found his way across the pond, gone into high-profile personal training,
and adopted American lexis in the most delightful of ways: “If this were a
marathon, we’d be in the home strait right now. [Pause] I know you guys say
‘home stretch’, don’t you? We’d be in the home stretch right now.”
He is the most
inspiring workout leader, cheerily calling out motivation all the way through.
“It doesn’t matter how high you jump,” he tells you. “It only matters how hard
you try! Calories burn on effort, not
achievement!” “We’ll make a deal.
I’ll stick with you and you stick with me!” “Play with it! Have fun! When you
were a kid, this wasn’t exercise, this was play! Be a kid again!”
He also has the good
manners to be very inclusive towards his “assistants”. A lot of trainers like
to have a posse behind them doing the exercises along with them, but often they
either just wave perfunctorily at them at the beginning, saying “and I’ve
brought some friends along – this is Rob and this is Sarah” and then pay
them no more attention than to occasionally call out “You OK back there?” or
they ignore them completely. Nicky, however, takes the time to introduce his
companions in a meaningful way at the beginning of each workout and then he
constantly circulates from one to the other, chatting to them, encouraging them,
remarking on the height of their kicks, and challenging them to races.
There are 10 workouts
in the programme – five for Month 1 and five for Month 2 – and you cycle
through them. By the time you’re doing the same workout the fourth time, it can
start to feel a bit repetitive, but that doesn’t matter once you realise how
much easier it is the fourth time than the first time – clear evidence of
progress.
Do not be fooled by
her angelic face and innocent manner. This woman is a beast and will have you
hyperventilating within minutes. Judging by the recipes that populate her
website, she appears to subsist on raw fruit and vegetables, but she seems
remarkably healthy – and even happy – in spite of it. Just look at those
push-ups!
I love this guy – his
laid-back manner, his borderline-incomprehensible rapper-like way of speaking,
his extensive and perfectly coordinated wardrobe, his way of occasionally
drinking from a glass instead of from a water bottle during workouts, the fact that he unconcernedly works out on an
area of floor measuring about 2m2, the fact that he did a couples
workout with his wife and called it “Black Love”, his delightful habit of
whooping instead of admitting that he is feeling any fatigue, his way of
telling you to “crack a window open and make sure there are no kids in the way”
before you start, his ability to do push-ups for a minute without
appearing to get out of breath, the fact that he takes the time to respond to
every comment left on YouTube (in the language of the commenter), and, most of
all, the way he regularly stops an exercise about ten seconds from the end,
wandering off to get his water or saying “OK, that’s enough”.
Many of his workouts
have that odd property whereby you skip along through the exercises thinking,
“Well, this isn’t very hard. I don’t know what good this is supposed to do,”
and are half-considering changing to a different workout when you suddenly
realise that you’re actually sweating buckets and your chest is pounding but
you hadn’t even noticed that you were tired.
His website is a
YouTube channel, which means that it’s a tiny bit messy to find your way around
– there’s no internal search feature and you can’t read the workout
descriptions without actually opening the workouts – but admittedly it is
better organised than many YouTube workout channels, with clearly set-out and
labelled playlists, each of which is an entire workout programme.
He’s a bit off the wall, which may or may not appeal to you, but it definitely sets him apart from the other trainers plying their wares on the internet. Clown though he may be, his workouts are no joke, so consider yourself warned.
Some of his workouts can be found on his YouTube channel in the Accelerated Series section, and there are many more wandering around unsupervised on the internet, easy enough to track down through Google.
Even if you don't have access to weights, it's worth trying out some of the workouts that use them. Some of them, such as the Accelerated Series Lower Body Workout, use weights so briefly that the workout would hardly be compromised by not using them.
This is another
channel on YouTube, bringing together an assortment of trainers. It’s a bit all
over the place, and if you don’t go on there knowing exactly what you’re
looking for, you can end up wandering the labyrinths of playlists, forgetting
why you’re there in the first place, but once you work out which trainers or
programmes you like, you can mentally filter out the rest and zone in on one of
the many very good workouts on the channel.
A lot of the workouts
on this channel are at the shorter end of the scale, so you can do them
individually if time is tight or you can combine them for a longer session. My
favourites are:
Workout programmes
JILLIAN MICHAELS
Various programmes (30-Day Shred; Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism; 6-Week Six-Pack Abs, etc.) In the Popular Uploads section. Some mini-workouts of just a few minutes, others of 30 or 60 minutes. Some of them use weights.
In the BeFit Workout Systems section. 10-15 minutes each. Some of them use weights.
In the BeFit Workout Systems section. 20 minutes each, including warm-up and cool-down. Some of them use weights.
In the BeFit Workout Systems section. 10 minutes each. One or two of them use weights.
Individual workouts
BILLIE BLANKS JR. BOOTCAMP CARDIO DANCE WORKOUT
In the Cardio Fat-Burn section. 10 minutes. No equipment.
In the Cardio Fat-Burn section. 10 minutes. No equipment.
I hope you find something you enjoy here.
