You don’t need to join a gym to build muscle and lose fat. If you are short on time and low on patience I highly recommend that you don’t. You can effectively provide resistance to every muscle and joint in your body without using a single machine—all you need is 30 square feet of space, a yoga mat, dumbbells (optional) and your own bodyweight. Whenever I develop a program for a client, I try to stick with the basics to keep things as simple and straightforward as possible. The goal is to get stronger with each workout and activate as much muscle as possible. There are a number of ways this can be accomplished: add more repetitions to an exercise, add more weight, take shorter breaks or change the angle to make the movement more challenging. There is no end to what you can do to continually challenge your body.
When it comes to performing exercises at home that challenge the body and work a lot of muscle, nothing beats the classic pushup. It activates the chest, shoulders, triceps, rhomboids (upper back) and abdominals. I recommend that you become as efficient as possible at performing this movement. It is a foundational exercise that transfers extremely well to other movements. In the two videos below I have illustrated both a beginner version (the knee assisted pushup) and an intermediate version of this exercise. You need to determine your current strength level and then decide which one to start with.
The squat is the most basic human movement. It also activates a ton of muscle. The quadriceps (thighs), hamstrings, glutes (butt) and erector spinae (lower back) are the primary movers. Watch how a young child squats to pick up a toy off the ground. This is instinctual. Somewhere along the line we have managed to unlearn this movement and prefer to bend over at the spine with minimal knee and glute activation. It is a back injury waiting to happen. If that sounds like you, you need to start squatting. There are dozens of squatting variations that you can perform, but for now we’ll keep it simple. Watch the video of a goblet squat below (I have a dumbbell tucked under my chin for added resistance, but your bodyweight will suffice if you are a beginner). The squat appears simple, but there are a number of moving parts that must be synchronized for proper execution.
From a postural standpoint, nothing beats a properly performed row. Next time you walk down the street, take notice of how many people you see with poor posture. They are hunched over, shoulders rolled in and necks jutting out. They probably have desk jobs and suffer from “sitting disease“. To combat this you need to start performing exercises that pull back your shoulder blades. Watch the single arm version of this exercise below. If you don’t have a bench, feel free to improvise. You can use a sofa arm as the basis of support with bent knees in a partial standing position.
The push up, the squat and the row need to be the foundation of any strength training program whether you are training at home or in a commercial gym. As you get better at performing each one, look for ways to make them more challenging. The possibilities are endless.