Strength-training suggestions, outwith gym?

Options
castadiva
castadiva Posts: 2,016 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hello and Happy New Year!

Hoping for some suggestions, please. I have neither the time nor the money to go to/join a gym, and I'd love some suggestions of strength exercises I can do at home or work, without special equipment. I fit my cardio into my daily commute, but strength training is eluding me. I have a 5kg hand weight available, and am a strong, 5'8" female. I gain muscle easily, but don't want to add bulk to an already very large frame, so toning exercises are preferred, ideally things I can do in small windows of time. Any ideas?

Replies

  • engineman312
    engineman312 Posts: 3,450 Member
    Options
    i did this when i started out. http://nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/12/09/beginner-body-weight-workout-burn-fat-build-muscle/ body weight routines are excellent work outs.
  • leeanndelcourt
    leeanndelcourt Posts: 28 Member
    Options
    Hill climbing and eventually hill sprints, when you are ready for those.
    Push ups, sit ups, squats, lunges, planks, low planks, burpies. All the oldies but they are excellent strength building exercises and you don't need any equipment.
    Have you heard of P90X, TurboFire or Insanity? Awesome home work outs, cardio and strength training......
    beacbodycoach dot com/law4

    Happy Muscle Building! :) "Strong is the new beautiful!" -Nike
  • YMTaylor
    YMTaylor Posts: 230 Member
    Options
    There's all kinds of things you can do with hand-weights and/or if you can, get a resistance band. I know you can google most of these to get videos to show you if you're not familiar but for arms you can do bicep curls, bicep presses, tricep kick-backs, overhead presses for triceps, for legs you can do squats with the weights on your shoulders or at your chest, lunges with them at your sides, for back you can do pull-backs and open fly's, for chest you can lay down and do bench presses and open fly's and for shoulders you can do lateral raises, forward raises and lean forward and pull back working your rear delts. You can run through 2 or 3 sets of each of those in about 20 minutes and still get a great burn and start working your muscles. With the lower weight and being a girl you won't bulk up but you will build lean muscles which will burn more calories all the time. It's a win-win. :)
  • myofibril
    myofibril Posts: 4,500 Member
    Options
    "Never Gymless" by Ross Enamait

    Link: http://www.rosstraining.com/nevergymless.html

    Job done. If you are gonna do it you may as well start off on the best possible footing..
  • castadiva
    castadiva Posts: 2,016 Member
    Options
    Fantastic - thank you! I'll check out these links at the weekend, and google some of the things I'm not familiar with, such as P90X/Insanity etc. Not sure what a 'burpie' is, but sounds intriguing...
  • Luckydrd
    Luckydrd Posts: 56 Member
    Options
    Google "body weight exercises" or "convict conditioning"
  • tam120
    tam120 Posts: 444 Member
    Options
    I'm doing Insanity now, it's lots of cardio and lots of strength and core... it's really hard but awesome. A friend of mine changed her body doing it, I mean changed her body profile, like lost the hips and butt she'd been cursing all her life, she's strong and toned now, looks awesome. Insanity uses no equipment except your DVD player which is great, you do it all with your own body weight and plyometric moves. It is expensive but not as expensive as a gym membership and doesn't take nearly as long. It's 40 - 60 minutes a day, 6 days a week.

    However, you can do basic strength training without any of that too, pushups, pushups, pushups and squats (there are tons of others, which you can google). You can improve your body tone just working out using your own body weight.
  • castadiva
    castadiva Posts: 2,016 Member
    Options
    I'm doing Insanity now, it's lots of cardio and lots of strength and core... it's really hard but awesome. A friend of mine changed her body doing it, I mean changed her body profile, like lost the hips and butt she'd been cursing all her life, she's strong and toned now, looks awesome. Insanity uses no equipment except your DVD player which is great, you do it all with your own body weight and plyometric moves. It is expensive but not as expensive as a gym membership and doesn't take nearly as long. It's 40 - 60 minutes a day, 6 days a week.

    However, you can do basic strength training without any of that too, pushups, pushups, pushups and squats (there are tons of others, which you can google). You can improve your body tone just working out using your own body weight.

    Thanks for explaining more about Insanity - I've seen it discussed on MFP but didn't know what it was. Unfortunately, 40-60 mins/day is about 20-40 minutes more than I can realistically squeeze into my average day, so this may not be the best choice for me, but I shall be googling away at body-weight exercises this weekend, and things I can do with hand-weights/resistance straps. This has all given me a good place to start from, so thank you!
  • ceejay3101
    ceejay3101 Posts: 36 Member
    Options
    Hi Orph do you have a wii fit? If so I would advise you to invest in My Fitness Coach this is what I am using to work off the flab the fat has left behind, there are a lot of exercises you can actually use hand weights in and it covers cardio, upper lower and core exercises plus flexibility, I invested in some hand weights and a bench to use with it as well and use the hand weights in more exercises than it tells you to, it is working. You can work up the levels as well as it gives you a fitness test before you even start to evaluate what you are capable of.
  • nellie_88
    nellie_88 Posts: 307 Member
    Options
    BODYROCK.TV!
  • thelovelyLIZ
    thelovelyLIZ Posts: 1,227 Member
    Options
    You might check out this girls blog.
    http://piecesinprogress.tumblr.com/

    She's gone from about 40% body fat down to 17& body fat doing all at home work out, and she has a lot of tips for exercising at home.

    I personally hate weight training, so I'm coupling it with pilates, which I like a lot more. Not sure how much of a substitute it is for lifting, but it for sure works you muscles. I like the POP Pilates videos on youtube.
  • castadiva
    castadiva Posts: 2,016 Member
    Options
    Sadly, no wii, ceejay (and no likelihood of acquiring one in the immediate future) but if I ever do, I'll check that out - thanks for the tip, and glad to hear it's working for you. The blog suggestion is great - thank you to thelovelyLIZ - and Pilates on YouTube sounds good too - I find that sort of exercise both excellent training and very calming. Is Bodyrock.tv a US thing?

Categories