The covid-19 pandemic shows no signs of going away, and, unfortunate as it is, lockdowns are back, in different guises, across the country. And that means staying indoors as much as possible, staying safe, and maintaining hygiene and social distancing. Which leads us to staying fit at home as well, but this time, fitness enthusiasts will be prepared with some basic equipment: light weights, yoga mat, resistance bands. And even if you don’t have these, you can always opt for bodyweight workouts: tough, effective, and classic.
So, just like I did in the beginning of March, here are some workouts that you should try right now.
Also Read: Five great warm weather workouts
30-minute full body dumbbell workout
This workout has 50 different exercises using dumbbells weighing between 2.5kg to 5kgs. These are to be performed over a period of half an hour in intervals of 30 seconds on with 10 seconds rest between each exercise. It’s long, it’s arduous, but I tried this with light dumbbells over the weekend, and it’s very rewarding. Zeus Fitness is a channel I recently found and they do a series of follow-along workouts with different options of equipment (or no equipment boot camps as well), so choose what works for you. But for starters, this 30-minute video will give you a sense of what to expect. If it’s too short for you, try the 60-minute workout in the same series.
Knee-strengthening routine with no equipment
A workout doesn’t always need to be sweaty and demanding. Recovery and rehabilitation helps muscle and joint stability so that you can perform better when it comes to serious training days. So here’s a video from Tone and Tighten, which has more than 800,000 subscribers and shows five easy and basic exercises to fix knee pain and keep the joint healthy. Sets and reps are recommended and there is a small lecture at the start explaining what knee pain is and why it occurs. Did you know that more than half the time, knee pain is due to weak hips, ankles and quadriceps? But one must be regular with these exercises. It hardly takes ten minutes to complete and results will show within a few weeks of doing them.
P.S. Feel free to use a rolled up towel instead of the foam roller that they use in the video for one of the exercises.
Also Read: Five great workouts for some midweek motivation
2000 steps in 15 minutes
Fitnessa’s routine is ideally meant for active rest days between two heavy workout days, but you can also use it to get your body ready for a workout the next day. These energetic moves, including woodchoppers, side-to-side shuffles and jumping jacks are just perfect. Not just as a workout, but also as a stress buster. If someone’s looking to initiate the family into exercising, then this is a good routine to get people moving. There are some moves which can be done with a skipping rope, but even if you don’t have one, replicating the same movement will count towards your 2000 steps. Enjoy.
20-minute deep hip-opening yoga routine
It’s great to burn fat, build muscle, apply resistance, and get those pushups and squats in. But to do all of this, or in fact, to do anything in a physically healthy way, the human body needs strong, mobile hips. If you are not regularly stretching the hips or skipping on your cooldowns, then this 20-minute hip opener, done once a week, should at least give one of the most worked muscle groups in the body a good stretch. You will feel the change immediately, in the way you sit, stand, and squat, after this quick routine. Feel free to use it as a post-workout routine too, which would fit perfectly.
Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator and writer.
