The 4 BEST exercises you can do at home

Exercise has long been regarded as the best treatment for many conditions however, most people still don’t exercise or only do minimal day to day activity. You hear common excuses as to why people don’t exercise such as they have no time, or they can’t afford a gym membership. However, exercise doesn’t need to take a long time to do and you can easily exercise in your own home which doesn’t require you to buy a gym membership. This article is going to shed some light on 4 easy exercises you can do at home and implement into your daily routine to improve your physical health.

Step ups

A simple but effective exercise for increasing your leg strength and helping with knee and hip related problems. If you have a step at home or a set of stairs at home what you want to do is step up and down one of the steps ensuring that you are pushing through your heel when you are going up the step. This will help to avoid putting added stress on the knee joint. Try adding this to your daily routine whenever you need to go up your flight of stairs at home or you’re going down some steps to the back yard.

Sit to stand

Another simple but effective exercise for increasing your leg strength. This exercise is exactly as it sounds. What you need to do is start seated in a chair with your arms crossed and then stand up and sit back down. This should be done slow and controlled. You can use your hands to help if you need too or you can put a pillow underneath you to make the chair a little higher. The good thing with this exercise is that you can easily do it while watching tv or sitting in front of a computer.

Wall push up

For many the dreaded push up is just too hard to do so this is a great alternative and still helps to build your upper body strength. For this exercise you want to face a wall with your arms straight and palms flat against the wall. Your hands should be a bit wider then shoulder width apart and you should be standing about half a meter away. Keeping your body straight you want to bend your arms and lower yourself towards the wall. You then proceed to push yourself back up straight. Give it a try whenever you are near a sturdy wall or bench.

Walking

One of the best exercises for whole body physical health is walking. It’s easy to do and it can be easily added to your day to day activities. Try to aim for at least 10-15 minutes of walking a day whether this is going for a walk around the block, walking in the backyard or walking around the house doing some chores. Try and always keep on the move!

The key to performing these exercises and increasing your physical health is consistency. You need to be consistent with how often you do them. You will hear many people say that you need to perform the exercises this many times, at this intensity, for this long to get results. But you are much more likely to get improvements if you do the exercises consistently over a solid period of time. For example, if you were to exercise for 6 weeks you are going to get much greater improvements from doing 10-15 minutes of exercise a day rather than doing one high intensity session for 1 hour a week. Unfortunately, like most things improvements don’t happen overnight, and you do need to be patient and ensure that you are persistent with them. If you are ever unsure of where to start or what you can do consult an Exercise Physiologist, they will be able to tailor a specific program to help you with whatever condition you may have.