Full body home workout

Gym on a budget

What do you need to be in shape? Do you require an expensive gym membership? Do you need the best personal trainer? Do you need the latest full body home workout equipment? Do you need a healthy meal home delivery service? Do you need a personal Chef and a private nutrition expert? If you are a Hollywood star prepping for the next marvel multimillion dollar block buster maybe. But what about the rest of us, short on time and sometimes the penny. Does fitness have to be costly? Are we doomed?

What if you simply needed to understand your body?

If those are some of the questions you find yourself pondering upon, you are in the right place. Because so did I.

A body homemade

Why “homemade” body? Because for all of us without exception, the home is where the body is made. Not in the gym, but our own homes, our work places, our car, kitchens anyplace we spend the most of our time.

In your fitness journey your living and resting environment are of utmost importance and its where you need to begin. Your body is all you need, anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.

We are kept in the dark due to our lack of understanding of our bodies and how it works. We are confused by all the noise of the main stream media as we are brained washed into believing we need things that we don’t. Understanding and knowledge is what we need, a full manual about how this piece of machinery that is our body functions. In my opinion aside from your married counterpart your body will be the second most misunderstood part of your life. Lack of knowledge will be costly; check your medical bills, plenty of evidence there.

Your body is all you need

Your body is a machine, a complex and high performance piece of science. The use of gym machines is something I discourage. Most of these man made machines dangerously lock up our joints into set ranges of motions a bit like a humanoid robot. The best exercises are the ones that mimic daily bodily functional movements. Like lifting, pushing, pulling, walking, throwing and jumping. These movements are usually accompanied by objects of varying weight Eg: Your baby, your kids, the grocery bags, the infant car seat, the gate/ garage doors and garbage bin.

That is the reason I recommend free weights in the form of dumbbells for everyone and these are also my favourite types of exercises for a full body home workout routine. They closely copy theses daily life functional activities and most importantly are free range; they do not lock up our joints into set movements.

Natural movements are the best in your journey to an injury free fitness routine.

Homemade weights, get creative

What if you do not own a set of dumbbells? For my frugal friends our there, worry not! Get creative and DIY it.

The pandemic lock downs have played a big part in getting us creative with our workout regiments. Here below is a list of my favourite objects I either use during my travel in my hotel room, on vacation or at home. You must ensure though that which ever objects you chose, you have a strong grip.

Lets turn some of these household items into your private gym arena.

Large Dumbbells: 2 x 1L plastic water bottles filled with water/ sand/ soil
Small Dumbbells: 2 x 0.5 plastic water bottles filled with water/ sand/ soil
From your garage: a spare tire
Small bricks/ Log of woods (I have even trained with stones on vacations)
Small buckets or flower pot filled with sand/ soil (not water it will make the weight unstable?
The Ice bucket container from your hotel room
Tupperware containers filled with rice/ sand etc
A bag or rice or flour
Suitcases
Cabin bags

Have fun. These are a list but are only limited to the imagination

Focus on compound exercises

What I do is combine the weights with the following compound exercises. A compound exercise is any movement where you’re using more than one muscle groups at a time. Consider a squat: This one simple motion engages your core, quads, hamstrings, glutes, calf muscles and hip flexors.

As a beginner these 4 compound movements are all you need for a full body workout. Remember to always perform each movement in a time under tension mode, imagine moving in slow motion for strength conditioning. Remember to hydrate and take at least one minute rest in between each sets.