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Effective home exercises to lose weight.

To lose weight effectively you must first ensure your nutrition is in place and that you do not have key blocking factors preventing success. At this point you need to be doing exercise either in the gym or at home. You should ensure you are fulfilling the four areas of exercise and using the key techniques within each area to be successful.

Cardiovascular (aerobic) training outside the gym.

If you currently do not exercise then the simplest way to do this is to start walking. This underrated exercise will increase your energy levels, fitness and contribute to fat loss. If very new to exercising, again, do not put undue pressure upon yourself, instead start by going just for a 5 - 10 minute walk and gradually increase. Incorporate walking into your lifestyle e.g. walk to the shops instead of driving, walk at lunchtime instead of working through it etc.

If you are already active then you should look at ways of exercising which increases your fitness levels. This comes from working harder over longer. The focus should be on using intervals to increase your fitness levels. This can be done from power walking, jogging, cycling etc

The key to losing weight with whatever exercise you do is examining whether you are getting fitter. To do this the emphasis should be on short sharp bouts of aerobic exercise to lose weight effectively.

Resistance training in the house

Resistance training is most easily performed within a gym but this is not a necessity. Resistance training is performing a movement that brings fatigue to the muscles before you have performed 15 repetitions. Therefore any exercise that can be manipulated to do this is resistance exercise.

For those new to resistance training the best way to start is by performing the two key resistance training exercises below. If done correctly they will contribute greatly to creating the hormonal environment inside the body that is conductive to weight loss:

Squat

The ability to squat down to the floor is a fundamental and essential trait in life. To do a squat simply:

• Stand by a chair.
• Crouch down so that your buttocks touch the chair and then return to the standing position. This exercise is just like sitting down except you are not letting your body weight rest on the chair before standing up.
• Increase difficulty by using a lower chair until you can bend the knees to a 90 degrees angle.
• Add in extra weight as necessary to ensure you are at the point of fatigue before 15 reps.

Lunge

The ability to step forward with balance and control is essential in everyday movement. To perform a lunge:

• Take a slightly larger than normal step forward.
• Keeping your front knee over your foot drop down so the back knee is one inch from the floor. (do not let the front knee go past the toes as this can cause pain)
• Push off on your front leg to return to the start
• Repeat with your other leg
• Add in extra weight as necessary to ensure you are at the point of fatigue before 15 reps.

Perform these exercises a few times per week. The key for results is intensity. That is, using a weight heavy enough to induce fatigue within the required number of repetitions. Most people do not use a large enough resistance (esp women). This process can then be extended to other exercises to target the whole body, e.g. press ups, 1 leg squats, bar pulls etc.

Core training

The core is trained when performing certain resistance exercises e.g. squat, lunge but needs to be isolated out also. The simplest thing you can do is to practice contracting the key core muscles that support the lower back; these are the deep stomach and pelvic floor muscles. Contracting these together is called ‘engaging the core’

Using this principle you can then perform any number of holds to challenge the muscles around the mid section. Using a swiss ball is a great way to do this as it adds variety and fun into the programme.

Flexibility training

To retain and develop flexibility you should be doing an active stretching routine every morning and a static stretching routine to restore ideal posture by stretching the tight muscles.

Keys to home training

The key to home training is intensity and variation. The main problem that training outside the gym presents is how to progress the resistance exercise so that fatigue is induced before 15 reps. When done correctly everyone is capable of lifting quite heavy weights which will bring the benefits of weight loss and improved health. The key is keeping the weight used at a high enough intensity to challenge you. Aerobic training must also be increased in intensity to keep you challenged and not over performed or it will break the body down and inhibit weight loss. When done correctly home training can be very powerful.

The programme must also be varied and structured within the confines of Periodization or the body will not make progress and become stale. At this point you will mentally become bored also. Consideration needs to be made in regards to the level of general fatigue/stress your body is under. The more stress and fatigue the less exercise your body is able to handle.

Exercise is part of the weight loss equation

To lose weight without the other aspects of nutrition and lifestyle may prove to be impossible. It is essential you use metabolic typing to combine the specific foods your body needs to the right exercise to lose weight.