If you want to get strong and build muscle many people will advise you join a gym and while you probably should, you might well find that this is the biggest barrier between you and getting fit. Many guys and gals who want to get in shape find the gym overly expensive (anything from £200 a year to £200 a month… and that’s not including the joining fees or induction fees), an effort to get to on a regular basis and a potentially intimidating environment full of lithe nubile beach babes and ripped muscular hulks. While the latter point shouldn’t really be a deterrent, the money and the travel are valid excuses – so a home workout might be just the ticket. Here then, is the best fitness exercise workout at home – several entire workouts you can do from the comfort of your front living room.

Before you begin you will need dumbbells (up to 20kg at least), a skipping rope and a pull up bar. To be honest that’s not a lot of equipment and should cost you around £30 in total – still a pretty big saving on the gym membership and these will last you forever. The rest of the exercises will use just your bodyweight. You’ll also need about five hours a week and a fair bit of determination. This article will show you what the best fitness exercise workout at home is at every stage of your training – walking your through all the workouts and routines you need to go from scrawny to brawny but without needing to set foot inside a gym.

The best fitness exercise workout at home for beginners is probably a full body routine. This means that you’re training your whole body rather than just one muscle group (as do more advanced bodybuilders). This should take about forty minutes five times a week and should utilise every major muscle group in the body at least once. This might look something like so:

Skipping: 15 minutes (cardiovascular fitness/warm up)

Pec Flies: 3 x 20 x 15kg (pecs) – Using the dumbbells lie on the floor and widen your arms into a crucifix position so that the dumbbells are nearly touching the floor then bring them back to the middle above you and repeat.

Press Ups: 3 x 30 (pecs) – Using bodyweight, lie on the floor with your weight on your hands and toes (legs extended straight behind you) and then lower and raise your chest to and from the floor.

Tricep Dips: 3 x 50 (triceps) – Using bodyweight, have your palms resting on a sofa or bed and your legs extended out in front of you and lower your bottom to the floor and up again.

Dumbbell Curls: 3 x 8 x 20kg (biceps) – Using the dumbbells, hold the weights with your palms facing upwards and curl them upwards towards your shoulders.

Hammer Curls: 3 x 20 x 20kg (biceps) – Like the dumbbell curls except you have your palms facing inwards towards each other so that the weights are being held ‘sideways’.

Bent Over Rows: 3 x 15 x 30kg (lats) – Kneel with one knee and one hand on a bench, sofa or bed and hold a single dumbbell in the other hand.

Pull Ups: 3 x 10 (lats) – Grab a pull up bar with your palms facing outwards and dangle then lift your chin up to the bar and repeat.

Lunges: 3 x 15 (legs) – Using bodyweight or holding dumbbells, step forwards deeply so that your back knee almost touches the ground then change sides and repeat.

Squats: 3 x 20 (legs) – Using bodyweight or holding dumbbells, stand with feet shoulder width apart and facing forwards then lower yourself gently so that your knees are at right angles.

Sit Ups: 3 x 20 (abs) – Lie on the ground with your feet on the floor and knees bent with you hands by your head then slowly sit up and lower yourself again pivoting at the hips.

So there’s a basic workout routine you can do at home to target the full body – the best fitness exercise workout at home for beginners. Do it four or five times a week and you will quickly begin to see yourself building muscle and losing fat. Ensure you also stretch at the beginning of each workout before you begin. While that’s a great example of a full workout however you shouldn’t stick to it rigidly without experimenting with different exercises. There are many, many more exercises you can do with just some dumbbells, a pull up bar or your own bodyweight so occasionally try switching them around – as long as you do all the same body parts. For example you could change tricep dips for tricep kick backs (where you lean over and straighten your arm backwards behind you while holding a dumbbell), or press ups for the dumbbell press (where you lie on the ground or a bench and push two dumbbells up and away from you). Research more options online and make sure you keep switching so that your workout doesn’t grow stale and your muscles are continually confused into growing.

The best fitness exercise workout at home for more experienced muscle builders would need to be more complex however. As you start to improve you will need more than just one or two exercises for each body part. In order to build muscle above and beyond that which you would get just from being ‘fit’ or in good shape you need to train each body part in a more focussed manner then give it longer to recover. After the full body routine then you should move on to a routine that splits the workout into two. The most logical way to do this is to have two workouts – one for all the pulling exercises and one for all the pushing exercises. This is rather unoriginally called a ‘push/pull split’ and is a great starting point for those who need to step their training up a gear. For this one you will need to train intermittent days – doing your push, having a day off, doing your pull, having a day off – which also gives your muscles longer to recover between sessions. So here it is, the best fitness exercise workout at home for the intermediate muscle builder:

Day One (push):

Skipping: 15 minutes (cardiovascular fitness/warm up)

Press Ups: 3 x 50 (pecs) – Notice that the number of reps have also gone up to reflect your more advanced strength. Good luck with that!

Clapping Press Ups: 3 x 15 (pecs) – Using bodyweight, do an explosive press up that launches you off the floor, then clap before langing.

Standing Pec Flies: 3 x 15 x 15kg (pecs) – Using dumbbells, perform the same movement as the regular pec fly but from a standing position.

Dumbbell Presses: 3 x 10 x 25kg (pecs, traps) – See above

Shoulder Presses: 3 x 10 x 15kg – Using dumbbells, same as dumbbell presses but standing up and pushing the weights directly upwards over the shoulders.

Tricep Kick Backs: 3 x 10 x 8kg (triceps) – See above

Dumbbell Runners: 3 x 10 x 15kg (triceps) – Using dumbbells, swing your arms forward and backwards while holding the weights. This is essentially a tricep kick back and simultaneous hammer curl.

Tricep Dips: 3 x 30 (triceps) – See above

Squats: 3 x 15 x 25kg (legs) – Using dumbbells, hold the weights over your shoulders or at your sides while doing the same squat movement to make it harder.

Calf Raises: 3 x 30 (legs) – Using bodyweight, cross one foot behind the other and stand with your toes on a step or raised platform then raise and lower yourself by going onto tip toes and down.

Mack LeMouse

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