You don’t have to be a part of a gym to stay fit as aerobic exercise at home will still get you amazing results.

Gyms can be great. You get access to the best equipment and classes for not a lot of money each month. But there can be a lot of downsides to this. Among other issues, you may face:

  • Commute time if your gym is not close by which means fighting traffic
  • Finding parking
  • Finding an open locker
  • Fighting the crowds for equipment
  • The close proximity to people and the easy spread of germs and disease

When you exercise at home, you can say goodbye to all these issues. This article will look at how your home can be a great place to workout and strengthen your heart, lungs, and muscles. You can train at home and still get great results – even without equipment. Aerobic exercise at home is also free, so there’s no reason not to do it!

An Aerobic Exercise At Home Plan Without Equipment

The best approach here is by just using your bodyweight. You may think this is not effective, but bodyweight exercises are one of the best ways to build functional strength, muscle, and still strengthen your heart and lungs. If you’ve ever looked at a gymnast, you’ve noticed how they are some of the fittest and leanest athletes on earth. This is because their activity involves lifting, lowering, and maneuvering their own bodyweight.

You don’t have to go to such extremes as they do, but we will look at the best bodyweight exercises and then how to put them together into an aerobic/muscle strengthening circuit. Here is a list of the best bodyweight exercises with some YouTube links to demonstrate some that may be unfamiliar.

  • Push-ups
  • Bodyweight squat:

  • Lunges:

  • Planks:

  • Mountain Climbers:

  • Crunches
  • Skater Hops:

  • Burpees:

  • Running on the spot
  • Jumping Jacks

These exercises are not only great for strengthening and building muscle, but they also require a lot of oxygen to perform meaning they are great for aerobic health. This is a good list of aerobic exercises to do at home, and there a few options for how to put it together. Here’s one way to make them into a simple, but effective, workout:



  1. 1o pushups
  2. 20 bodyweight squats
  3. 20 lunges
  4. 30-second plank
  5. 30 seconds mountain climbers
  6. 20 crunches
  7. 20 skater hops

Notes: you would do all these exercises in a row to make up one round. You would then rest 90-120 seconds between rounds and you could do 4-5 rounds of this – making sure you have that rest period after each round. Make sure to start with a warmup such as skipping for 5 minutes or some jumping jacks followed by some leg and arm swings. This will make sure your heart rate is up, warms up the muscles, and gets the blood flowing.

Creating Your Own Circuits

The next way to use these exercises to make an at-home workout is to create time circuits. This will involve choosing 3 or 4 exercises and doing them all in a row for a set amount of time. Here is an example:

  • Bodyweight squats/mountain climbers/burpees – 30 seconds each

This would mean you do each exercise for 30 seconds and do all three in a row without a break. The whole round would take 90 seconds. You then take a 60-second rest and you can do at least 4-5 rounds. From there, you can start to create a wide range of variations. When 4 or 5 rounds at 30-seconds each becomes manageable, you could start doing each exercise for 45 seconds. Then up to a minute.

The selection of exercises also gives you infinite variations of workouts, and when combined in a circuit, becomes a heart-pumping, aerobic, calorie-burning workout. Here is another example you could put together:

  • Jumping Jacks/lunges/push-ups/plank – 45 seconds each

Creating circuits from this list of aerobic exercises is the perfect way to workout at home. You don’t need any equipment and only a small area, and maybe a mat. The everchanging options are also important as the body responds well to variations in exercise. When it does the same thing day after day, it becomes complacent and results can plateau. Variation is the secret to keep your body guessing in order to improve strength, muscle, and cardiovascular health.

The best workout is the one you haven’t done yet.

Exercise At Home With Equipment

If you already have a home gym set up, you’re probably pretty set as far as workouts go. This will look at some basic things you can do if you have some free weight dumbells, and a medicine ball. Here are some great exercise choices and some links to check them out:

  • Dumbbell squat and press:

  • Dumbell deadlift:

  • Lunges with dumbells in each hand
  • Overhead Tricep Extension:

  • Medicine ball slams:

  • Cherry pickers with medicine ball:

  • Bicep curls
  • Side shoulder raise:

And here is how we would put this together into a full-body, aerobic and muscle-strengthening workout:

  • Dumbell squat and press – 15 reps
  • deadlift – 15 reps
  • Lunges with dumbells – 15 reps (each leg counts as one rep)
  • Tricep extension – 15 reps
  • 15 medicine ball slams
  • 20 cherry pickers
  • Bicep curl – 15 reps
  • Side shoulder raise – 15 reps

Notes: You want to select a weight that you can comfortably do for the 15 reps. If you can’t get out the full amount of reps, it’s too heavy. And if you feel you could do 3o+ repetitions, it’s probably not heavy enough. You would perform all these exercises in a row and then rest for two minutes before doing them again. Start with 2-3 rounds to build up endurance for this.

Not only is this working every muscle in the body, it requires a large number of calories to perform, meaning it’s a great aerobic workout to strengthen your heart and lungs.

Final Thoughts

When you exercise at home, you get complete control of your environment. There is no waiting for equipment, and you can listen to any music you like without distraction – or someone asking you how much longer you’ll be using a machine. A few things to remember; you want to get that proper 5-10 minute warmup beforehand regardless of what type of workout you do.

You also want to finish with a bit of a cool down. This can be anything like going for a 10-15 minute walk or at least going through some stretching. If you have a foam roller, this is a good time to use one too. The other great thing with these types of workouts is that they don’t require a lot of time. Aerobic exercise at home doesn’t need to take hours and can be short and intense. This is a form of high-intensity interval training, and a lot of studies say this is the best way to boost cardiovascular health.

Always make sure with your doctor that you are ok to undertake any sort of fitness regime. But when you start to exercise at home, you may find that you start to enjoy it more than the gym.

References:

  1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
  3. https://www.sciencefocus.com/
  4. https://www.pennmedicine.org/

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This Post Has One Comment

  1. Shweta

    Really Best Info You have Shared. Thanks a Lot.

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