Are you a busy professional who wants to stay fit, and healthy since you need to play a vital role in your company? It is a fact that a workout program either at home or in a gym is the ultimate solution to live a healthy life. However, Choosing the place of exercise home or gym- is a dilemma for every fitness enthusiast. For busy professionals, a home is a convenient place for exercise since it saves valuable commuting time to a gym. Health benefits of home exercise also include enhanced cardiovascular health and overall fitness. Do you want to start a home workout program? Here are 10 home workouts for busy professionals.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
HIIT exercise involves a combination of several rounds of short intense cardio workouts followed by a brief recovery time. HIIT is an ideal solution for busy professionals since it requires 20 to 30 minutes to complete the exercise routine with health benefits including improving cardiovascular health and enhancing overall health. Here is a simple HIIT workout routine for beginners. No equipment, no gym is required. This HIIT workout routine is a set of 5 different exercises. Each exercise routine has 30 seconds of work time followed by 30 seconds of recovery. Completing a set of 5 exercises requires 5 minutes which you may count as one round of HIIT. Completing two rounds equivalent to 10 minutes of HIIT. Below is the breakdown
| Exercise | Work(seconds) | Rest(seconds) |
| Tempo Squats | 30 | 30 |
| Elevated Push Ups | 30 | 30 |
| Butt Kicks | 30 | 30 |
| Bear Crawl | 30 | 30 |
| Jumping Jacks | 30 | 30 |
Bodyweight Circuits
Bodyweight circuits refer to a series of exercises that complete a cycle or circuit. A cycle or circuit may include up to nine different bodyweight exercises. A cycle or circuit is structured in a way that different parts of your body get workout, not a specific part. The health benefits of Bodyweight circuit include improving cardiovascular health, enhancing strength, and endurance. A basic form of Bodyweight circuit may look like this
- Bodyweight squats: 20 reps
- Push-ups: 10 reps
- Walking lunges – 10 each leg
- Dumbbell rows (using a gallon milk jug or another weight): 10 each arm.
- Plank: 15 seconds
- Jumping jacks: 30 reps
Yoga
Unlike other exercises, Yoga poses provide both mental and physical benefits. While physical benefits include increased strength, and flexibility. this historic exercise is famous for relieving stress, and anxiety.
Pilates
Pilates is a set of exercises that help strengthen the core muscles by reinvigorating them and correcting their imbalances.
Resistance Band Workouts
Resistance bands are large elastic bands that you can use while doing an exercise to add extra resistance to the exercise. These bands make exercise simple whether at your home, office or on the go. Resistance bands are inexpensive, using them in various movements of your body improves your strength and flexibility.
Dumbell Workouts
With myriad exercise options, choosing a particular one for home workouts sometimes becomes difficult. If you ask me to suggest an exercise to do at your home, I would like to recommend Dumbell workouts. Dumbells are remarkably customizable and let you do different types of exercises targeting different muscle groups. A pair of inexpensive dumbells can help you achieve your fitness goals like developing a powerful core, strengthening your legs, or building muscular arms.
Cardio Kickboxing
Cardio kickboxing is an energetically intense workout where movements associated with the exercise come from aerobics, martial arts, and kickboxing. This exercise is inherently a cardio exercise that offers multiple health benefits. Several noticeable health benefits include reducing mental stress, enhancing flexibility, teaching self-defense, improving cardiovascular health, and ensuring better sleep.
Core Workouts
A strong core is vital for your health and keeps you active. Though the term core is so common in the fitness industry, it may be an ambiguous word to many. Core refers to an anatomically, and functionally connected group of muscles located in the middle of your body. These muscles work synergically allowing you to keep your body straight. stabilize the spinal column, hip, and pelvis when forces are transferred from the body’s lower extremities to the arms and body.
Alacrity in your movement, back health, and developing explosive energy- rely on the state of your core muscles. And, this is where core workouts can help you develop strong core muscles.
Stretching and Mobility Exercises
Though mobility and flexibility are often used interchangeably. one cannot replace the other. Flexibility refers to the potential of a muscle, or muscle groups to stretch to its, maximum limit. Mobility, on the other hand, refers to the ability to move different joints without experiencing pain or discomfort. While good flexibility primarily depends on the condition of muscles or muscle groups, greater mobility depends on muscles, joints, and synovial fluid. Having tight muscles, and stiff joints results in imbalances in the body making an individual susceptible to injuries. Stretching and mobility exercises prevent muscle tautness, and keep different joints moving- minimizing the risk of injury
Desk Exercises
Lack of exercise and a sedentary lifestyle are two primary reasons for causing many chronic diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart diseases. Taking people’s situation seriously into account, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people spend 150 minutes each week at a bare minimum to encourage people to live an active life and minimize the risk of many chronic diseases.
In its recommendation, the CDC does not mention the place of exercise. And, this is where the desk exercises come into the scene. If you are a busy professional burdened with schedules managing 30 minutes each day for exercise is a big deal. Instead, 5 or 10 minutes of short exercises throughout the day on your desk and making an aggregate of 30 minutes each day is no less effective than spending half an hour either at home or the gym.
Many people are so busy that going to a gym is a luxury. Exercising at home saves commuting time, ensures privacy, and freedom to choose a flexible time. Any of the exercises described above are ideal for a time-pressing professional. The bottom line is exercise, regardless of its nature-intense or mild-has significant health benefits.
