Working Out At Home

It's not always easy to head to the gym. You may not have time to add in the commute to your routine, you may have kids at home and no one to watch them while you hit the weight bench, or you may have simply made it home for the day and lack the energy to get up and go back out to the gym. If you have workout options at home, you remove the excuses and build the discipline to get your exercise in.

Even if you don't have a weight rack in your garage, you still have a heavy item that you can use to build your muscles -- your body. Whether you are 100 or 300 pounds, you have a tool you can use to make an intense workout. Jumping rope, push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, lunges, jumping jacks, leg lifts and other exercises all use your body's weight to your advantage. If you are trying to instill the good habits of exercise in your family, then taking them outside and doing some body weight exercise helps them burn off energy and learn some of the first lessons of physical fitness.

If you want to build your chest, shoulders and arms, and you want some alternatives to push-ups and pull-ups, dumbbells are a relatively inexpensive workout tool that you can bring home and keep in a closet or under the bed between workouts. You don't need a bench or a rack to keep track of these, and you don't need the whole spectrum of weights that you find on the gym's dumbbell rack. At the gym, figure out the ones you need, and buy the right weight and then the next two heavier pairs. That way you can make some progress even when working out at home.

The best part of cardio exercise is that you can literally do it anywhere. Unless it's raining outside, or the temperature is extreme, you don't even need to go to the gym to get your cardio in. Hop on your bike and ride around your neighborhood and community (after putting on a helmet!). Take a long walk and intersperse periods of jogging with walking, until you realize that you're ready to jog the whole way. It's likely that your neighborhood looks a lot more interesting than the inside of your gym, so lace up your shoes and get outside!

There are many different workout videos that you can buy and use at home. Whether you want to try yoga, work in some core exercises, or try one of those daily exercise programs where an instructor leads you, your video player is the pathway to physical change in your body.

There are many different ways to exercise from home. You save the hassle of driving to the gym as well as the expense of membership fees. Even if you keep your gym membership, though, there are many days when heading out the front door for a run is much more satisfying than hopping on the treadmill yet again.